What unites and separates us – the vertical border at the printmaking festival «Printmaking IN» / Article

Vertical border – this is the theme of this year’s graphics festival “Printmaking IN”, which presents the latest graphic works in three exhibitions at the Latvian Artists’ Union. Artists have tried to understand what unites and separates us in this world.

The international print festival “Printmaking IN”, which took place in Estonia in 1998 and is taking place in Latvia for the fifth time, this year is home to the Latvian Artists’ Union House in Riga.

Ieva Nagliņa, the curator of the board and the curator of the festival, says: “This year the theme of the festival, which unites all three exhibitions, is“ Vertical Border ”, and it is also called this main exhibition of works by Baltic artists. In this large exhibition we can see that graphics can largely deviate from classical boundaries, classical associations – there can be black and white, linear, etching or some other works of art made directly on paper, [bet] it can also be a digital image, a three-dimensional image. ”

Latvia is represented in the exhibition by two artists – Artūrs Virtmanis and Ilze Lībiete – with large-format works created here on site in the exhibition hall of the Latvian Artists’ Union.

“The works were done very quickly, in two hours in one day, so that the nerve does not disappear, the feeling that I want to say with my emotions,” reveals graphic artist Ilze Lībiete. “What did I mean by these works? It is important when the graphics are very slow in such a contrast – there is a preparation process, you have to prepare a plate, you have to prepare paper, you have to moisten, then you have to prepare the form, you have to print – everything is slow. I wanted it to be fast and to have that nerve. There are people who say, “What is this to you? Are they hieroglyphs, can they be read or translated? ” No, it’s not like that, it’s a purely emotional thing that happens, and there’s nothing I can do about it. “

The unifying theme of all three exhibitions, “Vertical Boundary”, looks for lines in the visual language of graphics that unite or divide us – in views, values ​​and tastes, as well as in appearance or prejudice.

Perhaps it is the vertical boundary that connects and unites, despite the constraints.

The curator of the festival Ieva Nagliņa continues: “From Estonia, we have invited the grandmaster, old master Tenis Lānema, as well as the representatives of the association“ Non Grata ”Anonymous Boh and Taje Devilgirl – Estonian authors who are recognizable by these nicknames. And the Lithuanian artist Vaiva, who works in original technique, author technique. ”

The theme of the exhibition by a group of Danish artists is derived from the term ‘habitat’, while the name ‘Ha-BiBi-TaT’ itself is a tribute to the playful approach of the Dadaist movement in the creation of art in the first half of the twentieth century. It also includes a reference to the Arabic word “habibi” for romantic interest.

“On the one hand, the graphics are complicated by the fact that there are many different techniques, the viewer may sometimes even be confused, but on the other hand, it does not sometimes matter in which technique it is performed. New technologies are coming, once it was digital printing, photo, video, now there is a 3D printer, in general digital art that exists only on the Internet. And then it might seem that this is a threat to classical techniques, but it is not, because in reality, artists, first of all, continue and return from time to time, and young artists also turn to classical techniques, ”says Ieva Nagliņa.

The Chamber Gallery on the upper floor of the Artists’ Union House houses an exhibition of two illustrators hidden under nicknames, who made drawings at the turn of the century in the then popular image processing program “Ms Paint”. The viewer can also sit at the old computer and draw something himself.

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