Artist Vidvuds Zviedris is presenting an ambitious range of new work – his solo exhibition ONCE GRASS WAS BLUE AND SKIES WERE GREEN is opening at Art Station “Dubulti”, Jūrmala, October 24. “What happens to our psyche when violence becomes ubiquitous, almost mundane, when we keep seeing it and cannot stop it?,” asks Vidvuds Zviedris, who has lived and worked in America since 1995, but returned to Latvia in 2020 and has now opened his largest solo show.
The opening of Vidvuds Zviedris’ solo exhibition ONCE GRASS WAS BLUE AND SKIES WERE GREEN at the Art Station “Dubulti” will take place on October 24 at 6:00 PM, while the press tour for the media will take place on October 24 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM.
“I keep circling the question of where we find ourselves today – surrounded by devices that let us witness, in real time, the most abhorrent and extreme expressions of human behaviour. The history of violence is being rewritten before our eyes. So who exactly are we – participants, passive observers, or accomplices?,” asks Vidvuds Zviedris.
”The exhibition shows a tension between the individual – the fragile human being – and the anonymous power construct of human resources devised for political gain. With contrasts in the scale of the works, and the tension they display, the exhibition addresses the theme of co-responsibility in the contemporary world. Vidvuds Zviedris practice moves freely between painting, sculpture, object, photography, drawing. He relies equally on found materials charged with experience. Drawings by the artist’s six-year-old daughter have found their symbolic place in the exhibition,” tells curator Inga Šteimane.
For those who hear an echo of the latvian poet Ojārs Vācietis in exhibition’s title Vidvuds Zviedris remarks: “Poetry and art both move the psyche in ways we cannot quite predict or explain. We feel things, without knowing why or how. Vācietis’s lines don’t clarify – they are a puzzle, a mystery that stirs and opens something in our hearts, makes space for creativity and free interpretation. I hope the viewers see that I have no intention to manipulate. What interests me is work that awakens, not instructs. If art can stir the subconscious, shift the stone inside us, that’s enough.”
Vidvuds Zviedris (b. 1976, Rīga) studied painting at the College of Art and Design in Detroit (1995–1999). Since 2003, he has held eleven solo exhibitions at the McCormick Gallery in Chicago, including Far and Further Still (2025). Zviedris returned to Latvia in 2020. His works are held in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, the DePaul University School of Music, the Tisch Library at Tufts University, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the Ryerson & Burnham Library at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Library of Latvia.
Public programme:
25 October, 16:00 – Tour and conversation with artist Vidvuds Zviedris and curator Inga Šteimane, as part of the Jūrmala Autumn Guided Tour Programme
26 October, 14:00 – Tour and conversation with artist Vidvuds Zviedris and Inga Šteimane, as part of the Jūrmala Autumn Guided Tour Programme
9 November, 14:00 – Tour and conversation with artist Vidvuds Zviedris and Inga Šteimane
14 December, 14:00 – Tour and conversation with artist Vidvuds Zviedris and Inga Šteimane
Vidvuds Zviedris’ solo exhibition ONCE GRASS WAS BLUE AND SKIES WERE GREEN at the Art Station “Dubulti” takes place from 24.10.2025 to 01.02.2026. The exhibition is on view every day, including weekends and holidays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is free.
About Art Station Dubulti:
For a decade, Art Station Dubulti in Jūrmala, Latvia, has stood as a quietly radical space within Europe’s cultural landscape, offering an inclusive and experimental platform for daily encounter with contemporary art. A hybrid between railway station and exhibition hall, it sustains its original purpose while extending into public culture through thoughtfully curated and profoundly stirring programmes. The station’s functional overlap, shaped by a daily rhythm of arrivals and departures, continues to guide its curatorial vision towards a layered and inclusive cultural experience. Founded and directed by art historian Inga Šteimane, Dubulti remains the only widely-known professional exhibition space in Europe operating within an active train station. Open since 2015, it keeps adding a new dimension to an iconic Socialist Modernist building conceived by St. Petersburg’s visionary architect Igor Yavein in 1977. Supported by the Jūrmala City Council and the State Culture Capital Foundation, its programme brings together artists and audiences from Latvia and beyond in an environment where art is not secluded from life but folded gently into its motion.
