Rūdolfs Štamers solo exhibition “Somewhere Something Fell Down”
Curated by Zane Onckule
The motif of Rūdolfs Štamers’ first personal exhibition at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre is an immersive and manipulative experience that affects the senses, including hearing, smell and spatial orientation.
By weaving together references to such personally experienced emotional qualities as desires, feelings, urges and longings, Somewhere Something Fell Down serves as a framework for playing out imaginary mental scenarios and absurd story-situations. Represented in several scenographic segments, divided into separate zones, the exhibition’s conceptual vocabulary uncovers the artist’s thought trajectories and mental states, related to reflections on the destabilizing effects of different external sources of irritation and the necessity to tame the chaos they create.
In the context of the exhibition, what is deeply subjective and personally relevant for the artist becomes a generalized visualization of the boundary between reality and the world of dreams. In reference to an experience vividly impressed in the memory, his first black-and-white nightmare, Štamers’ circulation of obsessive thoughts has given birth to an installation that literally illustrates the ground being pulled from under one’s feet. That dream, whether a nightmare or not, whether black-and-white or not, must be seen as due to a deficiency of sleep, as due to the impurities in blood circulation, without proportion and rationality, without truth and clarity. Striving for balance is like waking up from a dream, a return to actual truth governed by presence, consciousness and an at least apparent sense of control over events. Although this does not happen all at once. With the vestibular system attempting to adapt at all costs, the spectral range of yellow light in the space causes a neurological, colour-suppressing reaction, seemingly leading back into the nightmare and making everything visible appear monochrome.
Artist’s acknowledgements: Matīss Eduards Āboltiņš, Tuukka Laurila and Benjamin Pöntinen, Elīza Elizabete Ramza, Filips Smits.
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Urara Tsuchiya’s solo exhibition “The Sahara”
Curated by Zane Onckule
Kim? Contemporary Art Centre is pleased to present Urara Tsuchiya’s first exhibition in the Baltics. Across Tsuchiya’s expansive practice – spanning intricately constructed ceramics, immersive installations, costume, performance and video – the whimsical temporality of an impulsive performance is interwoven with the longer-lasting act of calculated patience required at the kiln.
Tsuchiya is best known for her hand-painted ceramics with explicit motifs, exploring the space between the surrealistic and the ordinary and that awkward strangeness that comes along with it. These sculptures tend to take the form of realistic objects such as suitcases, underwear, toothbrushes or miniscule interior replicas filled with everyday tools and objects, serving as containers for mise-en-scènes depicting humans – and, at times, animals – mingling, climbing, bathing, all the while engaging in two/three/four-way sexual intercourse.
By adopting narratives from lived experience and exchanges with fellow artists and friends, as well as others pulled from TV shows and popular culture at large, Tsuchiya is concerned with subversion of kitsch and pushing the boundaries of comfort. Under the cover of playfulness and all things innocent, Tsuchiya’s work explores the disconnection that can be found between the personal and social worlds by tackling tensions in modern relationships and prevailing traditional patriarchal structures.
The presentation at Kim? includes a display of ceramic works – both from an earlier exhibition as well as new works produced by the artist at ceramic studios in London and Riga. The exhibition also features the short film The Sahara directed by the artist’s friend, and prolific fashion photographer, Ben Toms, which functions as an alternate environment to the sculptural pieces and further expands the behavioral patterns characteristic of her objects of affection.
Disclaimer: some of the works on display in this exhibition contain adult imagery.
Acknowledgements: Ben Toms, Gallery Union Pacific.
Supporters:
Ministry of Culture, State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Absolut, Valmiermuiža, KRASO
