Kaspars Groševs at Editorial

Artist: Kaspars Groševs

Exhibition title: The Old Man Goes Home

Venue: Editorial, Vilnius, Lithuania

Date: June 3 – July 2, 2021

Photography: Ugnius Gelguda, Jonas Balsevičius / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Editorial, Vilnius

Editorial is delighted to present “The Old Man Goes Home” – the first solo show of a Riga-based artist Kaspars Groševs in Lithuania.

The Old Man Goes Home

The old man emerges from the woods, where the mist disperses. The old man doesn’t have a farthing in his pocket, he doesn’t know the language of his surroundings, he just walks home. The old man used to be blind a long time ago, but tonight he sees everything. The sky flashes with occasional floating or shooting stars, fireworks, auroras and halos. The old man just nods: mhmm…The old man goes home, he might have had one too many, or he is just tired. Did he meet anyone before? Sometimes the old man drinks with the ghosts of the old sanatorium before they suddenly go off to creak some doors. The old man has seen a lot, but he has no way of noting any of it down. He doesn’t know what year it is, but he believes in phantom time. The old man has seen some of the trees before, but he is not sure how far away the home really is, he just walks through the landscape as it has always been. He hears birds chirping, a bit later he hears sirens and a distant drone; he just nods.

The old man brings nothing and everything with him; he carries the weight of himself and his thoughts, which only ghosts have heard expressed loudly. Is someone waiting for him? The old man doesn’t know. He just wants to get home and then see. As he walks, hardly anyone notices him, only a few squirrels and an old elk. The man doesn’t know he is part of a tale. The old man just walks past fields, forests, swamps and hills. Every now and then he sees unusual sights, but he just walks past them. He is saturated with memories and reminders, he sees into the tunnel that’s taking him home. The old man carries all his responsibilities with him, and his shoulders stoop lower and lower. Sometimes he thinks he is carrying the weight of the world, a world he cannot remember any more. He knows he’s quite remote from it, he doesn’t notice the slight desynchronisations or the things that are out of proportion. The old man moves through the strokes of flora. He soaks up the fresh air, although he longs for the smokey, peaty air of his home; he feels the taste of the air in his mouth. He nods: mhmm…

The old man just goes home. The leafy silence around him doesn’t feel silent any more. The old man’s shoes squeak against the mossy ground. He hears himself adding to the quiet orchestra of the forest, he moves like a beat. The old man goes home following the order of his own footsteps. The old man doesn’t tell anyone that all of it is his, he is a humble god.

Kaspars Groševs (b. 1983) is a visual and sound artist and curator based in Riga. He has exhibited at Kunsthalle Bratislava in Bratislava, darkZone in New Jersey, No Moon in Brooklyn, NY, Futura in Prague, BOZAR in Brussels, Shanaynay in Paris, and SIC in Helsinki, as well as the Latvian National Museum of Art, the Exhibition Hall of the National Library of Latvia, and the Kim? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga. He was a finalist for the Purvītis Prize in 2021. His works are in the collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art, the Zuzeum Art Collection, the VV Foundation in Latvia, and various private collections. Groševs makes music mostly under the alias Figūras, and since 2002 he has hosted various radio shows, the most recent being Radio San Serriffe at radio NABA. He was a co-founder and since 2017 has been CEO of the cassette label No Sex Just Talk. Groševs was a co-founder and since 2014 has been a curator of the 427 gallery in Riga.

Editorial is open Wednesdays – Fridays 3-7 pm and Saturdays 12-4 pm.

Editorial‘s program is supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius municipality.