Daiga Grantina at Art Museum Riga Bourse

Artist: Daiga Grantina

Exhibition title: Lauka telpa

Curated by: Zane Onckule

Venue: Art Museum Riga Bourse, Riga, Latvia

Date: May 7 – July 31, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Kim? Contemporary Art Center

Kim? Contemporary Art Center in cooperation with Art Museum RIGA BOURSE and Gallery Emalin presents the largest to date solo exhibition in Latvia of works by internationally acclaimed Latvian artist Daiga Grantiņa.

Specifically for this homecoming exhibition, Grantiņa has assembled elements of her sculptural vocabulary developed in her practice to present newly created and recreated works. Lauka telpa focuses on the symbolic potential of Grantiņa’s oeuvre – shifting from a process-based practice to one that is rooted in impressions of the mind which simply occur.

Within the space of the exhibition, these visions of the artist’s imagination are arranged along a diagonal line, occupying the entire perimeter of the vast hall. A series of sculpture-typologies trace the diagonal, sparking rhythm and revealing patterns of gestures that gradually culminate in a sensation of space. A monumental, red tower piece, previously presented at the Latvian Pavilion of the 58 th Venice Biennale under the title Saules Suns, integrates the center of the line in a motion expanding vertically. This linear arrangement of objects can be experienced as a spatial notation, a language formed through sculptural drawing: Lauka telpa reads physical space as form free to be drawn into.

The drive for this exhibition stems from the encounter with form as something all encompassing: revealing the essence of matter in synthesis with our sensory experience –our capacity to complete form and hence becoming part of it. Lauka telpa is a wickerwork of unfolding, cyclical movements that build an expanded surface of contact through material, channelling the spirit of creation and the dynamics of experience. Grantina’s sculptural scoring of the space gives points of access to the invisible: the realm of sensation, of intuition, of the subconscious.

The Polish composer Raphael Rogiński will provide a musical entry point to the visual experience by interpreting the sculptural notation in an improvised composition. Rogiński will turn the sculptures into acoustic vibrations which trace Lauka telpa’s compositional line and the exhibition’s detachment from the regimen of the visible sphere – to an opening up of a dimension of joint interplay. Rogiński’s score has its own format that exists independently: as a concert, a performance, and as a presentation for radio.

Daiga Grantiņa was born in Saldus, Latvia, studied in Hamburg (DE) and Vienna (AT). She lives and works in Paris, France. Selected solo exhibitions include Atem, Lehm curated by Sara Fumagalli and Valentina Gervasoni at GAMEC Bergamo (Italy, 2021); What Eats Around Itself curated by Helga Christofferson at the New Museum (New York, USA, 2020); Saules Suns curated by Inga Lāce and Valentinas Klimašauskas at the Latvian Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale (Italy, 2019); TOLL curated by Sandra Adam at Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France, 2018) and Pillars Sliding off Coat-ee curated by Rhea Dall at Kunstverein Hamburg (Germany, 2017).

Supported by: State Culture Capital Foundation, Embassy of Poland in Riga, EMALIN, Art Museum RIGA BOURSE, Latvian National Museum of Art.

Assistant Curator: Elīza Ramza, Exhibition Coordinator: Vita Birzaka, Exhibition curator, LNMA/ Art Museum RIGA BOURSE, Project assistants: Yônah Simonet, Rūdolfs Štamers, Graphic design: Kristīne Jansone

Daiga Grantiņa, Lauka telpa, 2022, installation view, Art Museum RIGA BOURSE in collaboration with Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, 2022. Photos by Toan Vu-Huu