Jānis Mitrēvits Re-evolution exhibition will be on view in the Art XO gallery

Jānis Mitrēvics is one of the first great post-modernists in Latvian contemporary painting. Groups of artists Gentle oscillations partner Since the 1980s, he has been known for his individual neo-expressionist style of painting, which we would like to compare with the large arrangements of brutalist architecture, the expressive book form and the rough texture of the surface – ambitious and free painting, playful brutality in strokes, throws and drips of paint. Conceptual approach both in painting and environmental memorabilia, and at the same time humorous irony.

Jānis Mitrēvics plays and handles the plot and techniques – drawing, photography, computer graphics, screen printing and monumental oil painting. For the last twenty years, Jānis Mitrēvics with his company Dd Studio he gained international attention with the architecture of museum exhibitions in Latvia and abroad. It has won several awards at the FIAMP festival (International Festival of Audiovisual and Multimedia Heritage) about digital and multimedia presentation projects; EMYA special award (European Museum of the Year Award) for Riga Stradins University Anatomy Museum (2023) and Gobustan Petroglyph Museum in Azerbaijan (2013). In his latest solo show Reformation Jānis Mitrēvics offers his painting to the viewer, which includes both social criticism, cultural revision, and his own transformation. (Ilze Žeivate, 2024.)

“In a personal show Reformation we see a rebirth of Jānis Mitrēvics’s monumental iconography with a bright and sometimes surreal color, in which a man has become the main character for the first time – indeed a “male revolution”. One of the main works in this exhibition is simply Jānis Mitrēvics – young man, but the newborn’s head is adorned with a halo that resembles a holy aura and a pop exclamation mark borrowed from comics. How to understand? References and paraphrases, a spontaneous flow of ideas and ironic comments create the famous “disorganization” of Jānis Mitrēvics, in which the viewer, as always, receives a lot of trust for judgments done in subjective and formal terms. “There have been and always have been changes, progress is an outdated concept,” admits Jānis Mitrēvics and allows us to consider men, women, children, the elderly, communities, AI and, of course , painting according to plurality” (Inga Steimane, 2024.)

Jānis Mitrēvics (1957) graduated from the Monumental Painting Department of the Latvian Academy of Arts (1982-1976). Since 1984, he has held 20 personal exhibitions and participated in more than 50 important group exhibitions in Latvia and abroad. Since 2000, he has been one of the leading creative directors of architecture and museum exhibition design in Latvia – the new building exhibition of Ventspils Seaside Open Air Museum (2024), Riga Stradins University Anatomy Museum (2017 ). ), the permanent exhibition of the Latvian National Museum of Art (2016); In Azerbaijan – for the permanent exhibition of Azerbaijani oil in the SOCAR building in Baku (2018), Gobustan Petroglyph Museum (2013), important exhibitions of the National Art Museum of Azerbaijan (2018-2012). Jānis Mitrēvics paintings and environmental objects are in public collections – Latvian National Art Museum (Riga, Latvia), Rothko Museum (Daugavpils, Latvia), Museum of the Union of Latvian Artists (Riga, Latvia), Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University (Norton and Nancy Dodge Art Collection: Uncontroversial Art of the Soviet Union 1956-1986) (New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA), State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia).