Andris Eglītis’ new works were created in a splendid, though currently abandoned, neo-classicist residential building in Rīga. The artist is using it as a studio whilst the building is gradually undergoing major renovation. Collecting various items associated with both the renovation work, and the lives of the previous residents – cupboard doors, car mats, cords, boards and polythene – he creates abstract, geometric compositions, which are reminders of constructivism in their style. Eglītis then paints these peculiar industrial still-lifes, using his characteristic palette of colours and light, slightly slapdash, yet simultaneously academically masterful method of expression.
His works are absurd from the standpoint of abstract painting – within them, there is a little too much of the historical, and the specificity of the everyday, yet he does them in a realist fashion. One can see fragments of typical Soviet era furniture in the works, reminders of the way of life at the time, for instance, a coffee table with broken wheels. This paraphernalia from the recent past is placed in the interior of a tattered, historical, but still majestic early 20th century building, which can be recognized in the paintings from the wallpaper patterns or the height of the ceilings. Finally, the work method – the paintings aren’t representative of reality, but just another work of art, which is not available and won’t be accessible to the viewer, as they’ll most likely be wiped away due to the continuing renovation – pointing to contemporary art’s citing nature, where, hiding behind one reference is the next one, failing in this way, to ever reach the original source.
Andris Eglītis (1981) graduated from the Janis Rozentāls Rīga High School of Art and the Art Academy of Latvia’s Department of Painting. He gained his Masters degree at the Ilya Repin St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Fine Arts (2005). This year he completed the HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts) postgraduate course. Winner of the Purvītis Award 2013.
