Daiga Grantina at Liebaert Projects

Artist: Daiga Grantina

Exhibition title: Learning From Feathers

Venue: Liebaert Projects, Kortrijk, Belgium

Date: September 11 – October 24, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Liebaert Projects, Kortrijk

For Learning From Feathers, Daiga Grantina has created a new large-scale installation, conceived of as a suspended ‘sky carpet,’ alongside a series of sculptural assemblages. Aspects of spatiality and ornament explored in Grantina’s recent solo exhibition “Atem, Lehm” at GAMeC in Bergamo, Italy, are continued and developed further in Kortrijk. Taking its title from a piece included in Bergamo, Learning from feath-ers offers a point of entry into the artist’s current line of inquiry and makes overt the self-referential nature of this new body of work. The exhibition responds to – and resonates with – the spatial qualities of the exhibition space itself, which once served as a flax weaving mill and is housed in an architecture based on the engineering inventions of Gustave Eiffel. Grantina confronts the viewer with a shifting sense of scale, overlapping our perception of architecture with the sensing of tissue, both metaphorically and materially. The specific constellation of the four smaller spaces – accessible via the more expansive open space – delineates the conceptual structure of the exhibition. Unhinged doors are turned into view frames that superimpose and bring into dialogue the nine wall-based works with the experience of the potentially endless ‘sky carpet’ suspended in the central exhibition space — It serves as a passage to experience the nine wall works afresh. On a different level of perception the kinds and degrees of decay of the brick walls become a temporary component of the assemblages installed across them. These sculptures seem to surrender to the wall, to sacrifice their outline in order to draw from its support. In that regard, the ‘sky carpet’ can be thought of as a close-up view of the same phenomena of openness and porosity, only that its conceptual support is the sky. The sky/ceiling and the brick walls are in both cases a momentary sculp-tural element – in a similar direction as light and shadow is concretized as gestures of sensing a world. Learning From Feathers is Grantina’s attempt to create an unmediated synthetic entity of inspiration and environment.

Daiga Grantina’s practice often assumes forms of assemblage and sculpture turning towards drawing in an expanded sense. Central to the artist’s work is the process of close looking at a broad range of material behaviour and a phenomenological approach to her own creative process.

Daiga Grantina (Saldus, Latvia, 1985) lives and works in Paris. She studied at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Her recent solo shows include Atem, Lehm, GAMeC, Bergamo, 2021; Temples, Emalin, London, 2021; What Eats Around Itself , New Museum (New York, 2020); Saules Suns, Latvian Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale (Venice, 2019); Toll, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2018); Pillar Sliding off Coat-ee, Kunstverein in Hamburg (Ham-burg, 2017); KU B Billboards, Kunsthaus Bregenz (Bregenz, 2016); Heap-Core…, Kim? Contemporary Art Center (Riga, 2016). Grantina has also taken part in numerous group shows, including: Crazy, Cruel and Full of Love, curated by Kathleen Buhler at the Kunstmuseum Bern (Berne, 2020); Words at an Exhibition, Busan Biennal, Yeongdo Museum of Contemporary Art (Busan, 2020); GIVE UP THE GHOST, Baltic Trien-nal 13, curated by Vincent Honoré, Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius, 2018); CHILDHOOD Another banana day for the dream-fish, curated by Sandra Adam-Couralet and Yoann Gourmel at Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2018); Solar Bodies, curated by Ø at the Musée d’Orsay (Paris, 2018); Biotopia, curated by Sabine Rus-terholz Petko at the Kunsthalle Mainz (Mainz, 2017); Adhesive Products, curated by Praxes at the Bergen Kunsthall (Bergen, 2016).

Daiga Grantina, Learning from feathers (Sky carpet), 2021, Wood, fabric, silicone, string. In three parts, each: 400 x 400 x 15 cm

Daiga Grantina, Learning From Feathers, 2021, exhibition view, Liebaert Projects, Kortrijk

Daiga Grantina, Abroad, 2021, Wood, ink, striated plastic foil, 75 x 22 x 10 cm

Daiga Grantina, Durcheinander, 2021, Light projection, wood, ink, 71 x 57 x 5 cm (approx.)

Daiga Grantina, Is it always, 2021, Wood, fabric, pigment, silicone, ink, 71 x 57 x 5 cm (approx.)

Daiga Grantina, Sill, 2021, Light projection, branches, aluminium, wire, nails, 71 x 57 x 5 cm (approx.)

Daiga Grantina, Berg, 2021, Silicone, wood, felt, fabric, thread, 71 x 90 x 45 cm

Daiga Grantina, Library, 2021, Wood, fabric, ink, staples, glue, 25 x 15 x 8 cm

Daiga Grantina, Measure a Garment, 2021, Wood, fabric, ink, acrylic, 9 x 52 x 7 cm

Daiga Grantina, If Long Enough, 2021, Light projection, nails, string, ink, 71 x 57 x 5 cm (approx.)

Daiga Grantina, Part of the country, 2021, Latex, flax, ink