Exhibition ‘Solargraphy’ by Kristians Brekte and Modris Svilāns at ISSP gallery

Within their creative collaboration, artists Kristians Brekte and Modris Svilāns study various phenomena of human life, reflecting on them in the form of spatial objects, sound and light scenography, as well as analog photography. For more than five years, both artists have been engaged in solargraphy, documenting Latvia’s ancient sacral architecture and burial sites. Their interest in the abandoned, deviant and darker sides of life has turned the artists into researchers of a place, in which photographic experiments with the environment are both part of an observation and a kind of conclusion. Through their long-term cooperation, Brekte and Svilāns have created a psychologically disturbing unifying artistic aesthetic.

The artists themselves define solargraphy as “the principle of an image being burned into the frame by the sun’s rays”. In reality, such an image hints at much more – it is not just a fixation of a moment or a place, but a visual capture of an environment and time. Kristians Brekte and Modris Svilāns have traveled around Latvia with homemade pinhole cameras, hiding the cameras near abandoned churches and cemeteries; places whose existence has long been forgotten. As artists, they focus on the form, composition, and process of image formation, while as researchers, they return to the forgotten space of the present, recording monuments to life that have been neglected.

The visual language of Kristians Brekte (1981) holds references to the history of culture and art, religion, sexuality. The vandalism of the subject matter in the artist’s work mixes with a purity of form and technical mastery, uniting sharply critical references and quotes within already familiar aesthetics. Kristians Brekte is a graduate of the Scenography Department of the Academy of Arts of Latvia, where he is currently an associate professor and Head of the Department of Painting. In 2014, Neputns released Brekte, a catalogue dedicated to the artist’s work, and in 2016, his most ambitious exhibition to date entitled Arsenāls took place in the Arsenāls exhibition hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art. http://kristiansbrekte.lv/ ^[1]

In his creative practice, Modris Svilāns (1979) focuses on the study of sound and motion, creating technically developed and conceptually multi-layered works of kinetic art, and also has a passion for analogue photography. Svilāns graduated from the Metal Design Department of the Academy of Arts of Latvia and has been participating in exhibitions since 2003. In 2012, his solo exhibition Inertia at the House of Architects was dedicated to kinetic art objects and black-and-white photography. http://modrissvilans.lv/ ^[2]

Curator: Auguste Petre

Pateicamies par atbalstu / We are grateful for the support of: Valsts kultūrkapitāla fonds, Kraso Foundation, fineArt Print.

NB! Pirms izstādes apmeklējuma, lūgsim uzrādīt derīgu Covid-19 sertifikātu. / Entry to the opening with valid Covid-19 certificate only.