“The ability and need to believe allows a person to follow the path that leads to a world where lies and betrayal still exist, but the illusory covers that serve them in our world can no longer be used,” says Māris Upzars about the basic idea of the new exhibition. “It may not matter what we call the object of our faith. We tend to call it God, Higher Powers, Laws or order of the Cosmos, Human progress, the beginning of the Good and Just in people and other names as well.”
At the “Belief” exhibition, the artist presents works created over the past five years – the latest one was painted in July of this year. Some of the works shown in the exhibition were created in 2019 at the artists’ residence “Cite des Arts” in Paris, and the rest – right here in Latvia, inspired by nature, people, world culture and the life of the soul itself.
Māris Upzars (1968) studied with the painter Boris Bērziņš and graduated from Induļis Zariņš and Aleksej Naumov’s Monumental Painting Workshop at the Latvian Academy of Arts. Prior to that, he studied at the Department of Textile Art at LMA and graduated from the Department of Decorative Sculpture at Riga Applied Arts High School, where he gained an understanding of the basic principles of composition from the outstanding textile artist Georg Barkānas.
