25.07.2019. - 12.10.2019.
“Back to the future“ is curated show of Latvian non-conformist artist Visvaldis Ziedins (b.1942 - 2007).
Having lived and created in Liepāja during the Soviet times, Ziedins worked around the material restraints that he encountered. Often he would make art from found, quotidian materials that had been produced for other uses, yet he managed to express his personal thought and freedom through finding a new purpose for them in his artworks. This material limitation is in stark contrast to the conceptual depth and bravery that can be observed in the art of Ziedins.
It could be argued, that, nowadays, we are living through an ecological doomsday scenario. As the natural resources are getting more and more scarce, the creation of art from scratch might be a luxury that not many will be able to afford for much longer. Yet having a voice and expressing ones vision in art is (arguably) one of the most human pursuits.
This show has been titled “Back to the future” as it looks to this barely known chapter of art in Latvia, linking the past events with the present and possible near future where material limitations might yet again arise.
Excerpt from “Movement“, monograph about Visvaldis Ziedins by Ieva Kalniņa (p.362):
“What do we know about people? We know how many inhabit the Earth, we know how long they live. We know particular individuals. We have at our disposal material about particular periods of humanity…
As soon as we take away all of these limiting factors- time, number, the concept of the individual- we have to deal with the human being as a continuous. In other words, Man as eternity!
In order for a certain Ziedins to come about, who writes and is conscious of himself, centuries had to pass (that is, if I imagine myself as some kind of terminal point and count backwards from this point), which means thousands of people. In nature such points of consciousness or individuality do not exist. There, all are the same, all are impersonal. The consciousness of personality develops only in society, in a temporal setting.
In truth, it was not centuries that passed, but only nine months. It was not the interaction of thousands of people, but the interaction of just two.“
November 1968, V.Ziedins
Artworks on view are courtesy of Zuzans collection.
Photo credit: Ansis Starks