Jānis Kupčs Piedziedājumi [Refrains]
Jānis Kupčs (1969) operates within two significant creative domains that demand procedural exploration and frequently entail moving from one project to another – ceramics and painting.
Jānis Kupčs has a special connection with Tallinn because it is precisely here that he graduated from the Ceramic Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts. The artist earned his master’s degree under the guidance of Alekejs Naumovs and Kaspars Zariņš at the Art Academy of Latvia. Therefore, having his work presented alongside Aleksejs Naumovs’ paintings, sharing the same space and time, is also significant.
Since 2000, Jānis Kupčs has authored more than 17 solo exhibitions; they have predominantly been painting projects with titles that suggest poetic and post-modern sensibilities. The artist’s most notable painting exhibitions have been held in Stockholm (Sweden), as well as at the Mark Rothko Art Centre (Latvia), and the gallery MĀKSLA XO (Latvia).
Although Jānis Kupčs painting is rooted in real form, it nonetheless involves a certain level of abstraction and emphasises the role of painting techniques and the materiality of paint. Shared motifs emerge in his work, akin to recurring themes in a ballad. For instance, in his series Kuģu vēderi [Bellies of Ships], one might notice waterline markings, whereas the slightly curved lines in his Zudušo ciemu meklējumos [In Search of Lost Villages] evoke the image of an old village overgrown with bushes.
Kadrioru Gallery now offers paintings from some of Kupčs’ most important projects – Papīra kuģīša jaunā dzīve [The New Life of the Paper Boat], Zudušos ciemus meklējot [In Search of Lost Villages], Savā nodabā [On Your Own] and Cietsirdīgās romances [The Cruel Romances]. To establish cohesion across the series, he has employed a recitative approach – echoing the most significant large-format pieces of each painting series and creating smaller-scale works as connecting threads throughout the exhibition. Making use of the gallery’s unique space, the paintings create a movement from floor to floor like harmonizing voices in a choir as they perform a polyphonic composition.
The exhibition “Piedziedājumi” [“Refrains”] is on display from March 15, 2024.
Aleksejs Naumovs. Toponyms
It can be anything. A hat accidentally forgotten, a handkerchief deliberately forgotten, a flag stuck in the sand or in the sea. The bright colour of a house. Place mark. Something to which the heart or the eye clings.
The toponyms of the artist have a cosmic scale, they cannot fall into the usual categories, because it turns out that there are also hydronyms, urbanonyms, oronyms, etc. Each of them represents a geographical place – a reservoir, a city, a mountain.
The toponyms of the painter Aleksejs Naumovs are his landscapes – seen in France, Italy, America or here – in Latvia, Pardaugava. The Toponyms displayed in the Kadrioru Gallery exhibition are in tune with both the joyful mood and the architecture of the building.
Aleksejs Naumovs has graduated the Department of Monumental Painting of the Art Academy of Latvia under the supervision of professor Indulis Zarins and the creative post-graduate studies at the workshop of professor Eduards Kalnins. He has been a scholarship holder of the French government when studying painting in Paris.
From 2007 to 2017, Aleksejs was the rector of the Art Academy of Latvia, where he currently works as a professor. He mainly paints landscapes both in Latvia and abroad. He is often called the greatest contemporary Latvian plein air painter. He participates in exhibitions since 1977.
Aleksejs consistently works in the landscape genre, as well as in book graphics, in cooperation with the publishing house “Liels un Mazs” and this year he received the National Film Award “Lielais Kristaps” for his debut film, the animated film “Law of the Heart”, in cooperation with director Roze Stiebra.
