Pre-pavilion exhibition titled North by Northeast, presented as part of SoHo night during the Armory Arts Week, features new and recent works by artists, Kaspars Podnieks and Krišs Salmanis that are intrinsically related to their upcoming installation in Venice. Exhibition – an episode in New York – approaches the self-fashioning of an individual, a community, or even a small nation through grappling with notions of politicized geography, local artistic heritage, and work ethic.
Both artists address the tension between location and dislocation triggered by the ideological implications of constantly shifting political geography. The exhibition is permeated with references to the traditional Latvian rural lifestyle with its intimate relationship to nature, utmost respect to labor, and patriarchal worldview.
Krišs Salmanis’ Long Day, 2012, a 35 mm film (sound by Steve Roden), appears to be a single shot of a rural landscape, speeded up as we observe a day from sunrise to sunset. In the dawn we see a shed being built, by midday the construction is complete; in the afternoon, however, a storm sets in, and the structure is reduced to ruins. Eventually it collapses, and the sun sets.
In Kaspars Podnieks’ photographs from the Rommel’s dairy series we meet the residents of Drusti parish, a small rural community. A sudden rupture invalidates our expectations for the genre – as people of Drusti are being displaced, uprooted from their land, physically lifted high above the route they walk and the landscape they see day by day.
The Biennale exhibition, titled North by Northeast, will present new site-specific works by Latvian artists Kaspars Podnieks and Krišs Salmanis. The project is co-curated by independent curator and art historian Alise Tīfentāle on behalf of kim?, Riga, Latvia, and Anne Barlow (director) and Courtenay Finn (curator) on behalf of Art in General, New York.
A press conference with the participation of artists and representatives from Art in General and kim? Contemporary Art Centre will be held at 12 noon on Tuesday, 5th March, at the Art in General.
Celebrating the exhibition in New York, the official website of Latvian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale www.northbynortheast.lv has been launched on 27th of February!
Exhibition is open from 5th March till 30th March, 2013.
On the 7th March opening reception of North by Northeast at Art in General Project Space a cultural video blog in New York Appleseed TV has interviewed co-curator Alise Tīfentāle and artist Krišs Salmanis:
