Tatjana Semane's exhibition “Catchy – Įsimintinas (-a)“ at Meno Niša gallery

2016 03 10 — 2016 03 25 at Gallery 'Meno niša'
Author Echo Gone Wrong

Tatjana Semane“Catchy – Įsimintinas (-a)“ is the first solo exhibition by Latvian artist Tatjana Semane presented at Meno Niša gallery in Vilnius. Having started her career in 1998, today Tatjana Semane is an active member of the Latvian Artists’ Union. Her solo and group exhibitions have been held in Latvia, Finland, China, the United States, and Poland. Works of Tatjana Semane have been acquired by private collectors in Austria, Belgium, Belarus, China, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, and the United States. Tatjana Semane holds a PhD in philosophy. Her research field covers the history of wisdom in European philosophy.
The leading themes in Tatjana Semane’s works are ode to life and expressions of love in everyday life. The artist employs a variety of techniques, including water-colours, oils, pastels, collages, and sculpture. The exhibition titled “Catchy – Įsimintinas (-a)” is dedicated to artist’s collages. In the context of the exhibition, what links all the works is the manner of depicting figures, objects and spaces through interpretation rather than imitation or exact reproduction thereof. Like her paintings, Tatjana Semane’s collages represent the author’s visual and emotional experiences, filled with deep symbolic and philosophical content. For her, art is a way not only to know her own self, but also to observe the life that surrounds her: to analyse and realise life values, people’s choices, global issues, and love. Also, art is a joyful challenge and magic that adds meaning to life. As for love, its role is perceived as the main and aggregate driver for all processes.
According to the artist, we always want possibly better and greater experiences in our environment to make our lives more interesting, more fascinating and momentous. This need stems from our personal motivations or from the lives of others that we observe and find to be more attractive than our own. Whilst decorating facades of our lives for ourselves or for others, we often fail to realise the moments in our lives that are already momentous, unique and worth special interest for being reflections of everyday life events which are the meaning of life itself.
While using cuttings from magazines, newspapers or catalogues, the author, in fact, is using colours they are printed in to create her visual situations, spaces, objects and figures. “I paint them, but I use scissors and colours from magazines and catalogues for this”, says Tatjana Semane. Small-sized works accommodate an ample field of important meanings. Each art piece contains encoded common symbols existing in different cultures (a tree, a butterfly, and apple, a horse, an eye, etc.).Tatjana Semane’s works render no didactic function; they neither moralise nor guide the viewers to express their “pros” and “cons”. Colourful, vivacious and, at first glance, even ironic images encourage the viewers to rethink their personal experiences and detect/identify, in the context of the exhibition, memorable moments or their associations.

The exhibition at MENO NIŠA is open from 10 March to 25 March.