New Summer Season Exhibitions at Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center: From War to Contemporary Reflections

According to Aivars Baranovskis, representative of the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center, the five new exhibitions are diverse and symbolic:

“This summer season this year at the Rothko Art Center is marked by the classics and by the present, such a very contrasting connection between classical modernism and contemporary projects.”

This time the colors are not emphasized so much, although they dominate here in the full spectrum, but the main thing is the idea with which this new summer season exposition is filled, Zane Melāne, head of the Center’s Inventory Department, shares her thoughts: “We live in a very changing time, in which a lot and various fluctuations. And this season at the Mark Rothko Art Center in Daugavpils reflects it very well, showing this dual nature of the world, where both democratic principles and features of totalitarian power coexist. The projects on view here this summer are very bright, very artistically strong, and at the same time, art projects make us think about empathy, tolerance, about the coexistence of different things, and as always, contemporary art invites us to think.”

The telltale smell of paint and face to face with war

The Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center invites you to start the path of reflection of the new summer season with the exhibition “Art in the Gulag” by the Daugavpils-born Russian avant-garde artist Solomon Gershov.

“Daugavpils is the hometown of a single artistic and cultural excellence. The Russian avant-garde artist Solomons Gershov (1906-1989), who was born here, was an artist with a truly tragic fate – he was deported twice and experienced the cruelty of the Soviet repressive system firsthand. Also in the Vorkuta camp, despite his exhaustion , diseases and ever-present death, he secretly continued his creative work.

In order to avoid the treacherous smell of paint, in most cases the works were made with a graphite pencil and two or three watercolors.

It is the works of this period from the collection of Tanya Rubinstein-Horowitz, an art collector living in Germany, that can be seen in the Rothko Center’s summer season exhibition “Art in the Gulag”, curated by Olga Sologuba-Rota.

The curator says: “The exhibition exhibits 28 drawings by the artist, all of which were made in Vorkut, and all of them have titles written by the artist. In the exhibition, you can see how poor-quality materials the artist had to work with in the gulag, how poor-quality paper he used, one work has even been painted on a fragment of wallpaper. Our goal is to show these works to the world, those that have been lost for so many years.”

Solomons Gershov, born in Daugavpils, is also a contemporary of Mark Rothko, with a three-year difference in birth year, which clearly raises food for thought – did they ever meet in childhood, even though the fates of both are so different.

This and other new exhibitions are permeated by one heavy theme, and Daugavpils artist Ivo Folkmanis captures exactly that: “This season, the works of the exhibition are permeated by the theme of war. Perhaps Solomon Gershov’s drawings, which he drew while exiled in Vorkuta on those pieces of paper that were accidentally found, in such a poignant way. We also see the exhibition of Ukrainian artists “How I ended up in a bomb shelter”, which has a very current theme with poignant expressions with photographs, with installations, with today’s feeling, created by artists who themselves experienced the horrors of war from first days.”

Here we are already talking about works of art of the new era – in the expressions of Ukrainian artists. Folkmanis notes: “It is an interdisciplinary exhibition ‘How I ended up in a bomb shelter’, which visualizes the experiences of seven Ukrainian artists who came face to face with war. Their longing for a peaceful life, each one’s personal path to survival and hopes for a better future .”

Polish modernism on large-format canvases

The summer season in the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center is still filled with the works of the Polish modernist classic Stefan Gerowski, who passed away last year, in the exhibition “Stefan Gerowski: From Here to Eternity”

These are works of abstract painting – bright and made on large-format canvases. On Friday, June 9, at 4:00 p.m., at the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center, British art historian, critic and researcher of abstract expressionism, David Anfam, will lead a tour, where visitors to the Rothko Center will discover the most important facts of Stefan Gerovsky’s biography and oeuvre and tell about the importance of the artist in the history of world art. .

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“You don’t have to paint the experience, but the feeling of the experience”

Another new and powerful art project at the Mark Rothko Art Center in Daugavpils is the collection of works by the British artist Jane Bastina in Daugavpils called “Color of Words”.

“Thank you very much for the opportunity to work here in residency at the Rothko Art Center. It was impressive and extremely permanent in my work, inspiring me to create a large body of work. My experience here was guided by Mark Rothko’s words that one should not paint the experience, but the feeling of the experience or the feeling of the experience ,” says the artist.

“The tenderness is gone”

However, the loudest applause in the courtyard of the Mark Rothko Art Center in Daugavpils, opening this summer’s new season, went to the legendary group of artists from Latvia, whose name has only the word “Svārstības” left from “Maigajāi svātsbām”. Ieva Iltnere, Sandra Krastiņa, Jānis Mitrēvics, Ęirts Muižnieks and Edgars Vērpe participate in the exhibition.

“The anxiety of the individual at the same time as determined action was an important theme in the art of the Renaissance period. It was the time when six art academy students announced themselves as a creative association (1980) and created joint exhibitions for the next ten years, until the exhibition-action “Gentle Oscillations” (1990) gave the group a brand and a name. The nerve of time undeniably also affects the art of its members today. However, both then and now, they also keep in mind their responsibility as an artist, not to use the experiences of others for self-serving purposes, but to create signs and images that can be safely placed under a signature of the author’s own lived experience and conviction.This summer, a group of artists gathers in almost full composition at the Rothko Center to once again reflect on the spirit of the times, current socio-political upheavals and their imprints on artistic creativity in the “Fluctuations” exhibition.

Artist Sandra Krastiņa has taken on the role of curator here:

“The exhibition is about today, now and here, and about all of us. There used to be a group of artists called “Gentle Fluctuations”, 30 years passed and, well, we are creating an exhibition together – “Fluctuations”. Tenderness has disappeared.”

“The exhibition is about time, about a time that was relevant in the 90s, and now this moment is also very relevant and important. In this exhibition, we are five artists who are united by the coincidence of time, including the coincidence of the audience. That is what is interesting, what we can offer,” says Sandra Krastiņa.

She adds that the viewer will see how five different authors, who have been working for 20 years each in their own way, how they reflect today “It’s not colors or strokes, unifying or different, it’s our common sense of time, which can be found in Ieva Iltner, Sandra In the works of Krastiņas, Jāņas Mitrēvicas, Įrts Muižnieks and Edgars Vērpes.”

It was the works of this association that evoked the brightest emotions and reflections for most of the visitors, while for some it was a wonderful reunion.

The creation of this exhibition was also unusual and exciting for the artists themselves, each with their own handwriting, admits the artist Ieva Iltner:

“It is very healthy for an artist to display his works in a different context. We had not exhibited together as a group for a long time, which was also interesting. There was something to do, and that time now, the last three years, has changed a lot for all of us.

There was a pandemic and a war. For me, life and death is an essential topic. The artist already projects everything. He can no longer escape either from himself or from the world. He projects it all. That’s why people are probably looking at those pictures.”

Both the works of the group of Latvian artists and four other powerful art projects can be viewed at the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center throughout the summer season until August 27. Mark Rothko’s original works are also still on display, which will be complemented by the contemporary ceramics exhibition of the international ceramic symposium “Ceramic Laboratory” at the end of June.