The exhibition is multi-layered in many ways. Artūrs Virtmanis created it in collaboration with artists from other fields. The sound score was created by Toms Auniņš, video direction and choreography by Daniela Vētra, video special effects by Pēteris Tenisons, and a number of other professionals in their fields were involved.
Artūrs Virtmanis will really launch the exhibition only at the moment of its opening, but when I meet the author, most of its objects have already been installed. They are mostly pitch-black menacing sculptures that form a stark contrast to the bright white surroundings of the Dome Hall. But shining golden elements add a bright accent to the exhibition.
Exhibition “Psychopomp: A Beginner’s Guide to the Beyond”
When the exhibition will be revived, every visitor who wants to will be able to become a part of this exhibition and enter an apocalyptic landscape, which will be a challenge to look at the processes taking place in the world from a different point of view than the usual one.
Artist Artūrs Virtmanis explains: “This could be an opera about the end of the world if we move the exhibition to another genre. But there are also its ecstatic, joyful moments. In that sense, it is a bit like a provocation, because I feel that we have such a huge pressure from everywhere that everything is bad, it will be the end and through. I think we are already dulled to information presented in this way. So I am interested in poetically playing out the idea of catastrophe. At the same time realizing that it feels to me, for example, about a very cataclysmic time, of a sort of sword of Damocles hanging over humanity. What I propose to see is transcendence or something like that. To see these world processes a little differently.”
The dominant black objects in the exhibition are made of paper, more precisely – parchment, which has a symbolic meaning, as well as the fact that parchment has a characteristic smell.
“Parchment is a material that is part of the sinking Atlantean cultural layer. It’s paper impregnated with some kind of petroleum product, like tar, which makes it waterproof. But it’s an old-timey material that probably isn’t being made anymore, or will be in the near future. production will stop in time,” says Artūrs Virtmanis. “That paper has a kind of beauty of its own. It’s covered with like drops of that tar, and it has its own smell too, which is very important.”
Artūrs Virtmanis
Photo: Artūrs Virtmanis
Bright gold plays with the black tar-soaked parchment in the exhibition, which is both visually expressive and symbolically capacious. The artist continues: “These are the thermal blankets that are used when people are, let’s say, frostbitten or overheated. I am interested in two aspects. First of all, gold is a very slippery thing in art, because gold has been exploited a lot and it also has such a luxurious aspect. On the other hand, in this case, it’s the kind of synthetic aluminum gold that actually refers to, for example, the refugee crisis in the world, to catastrophic situations and so on. Those gold blankets also actually save people.”
Exhibition curator Agnese Zviedre calls the exhibition not something to be viewed from a distance, but an event to be experienced directly, where every detail and every symbol is important: “The exhibition is multidimensional. One aspect is a disaster, but the deeper we go, the more we can analyze what our society is like , what our mindset is, where we’re going. The artist has included a lot of symbols and references that need to be read.”
Agnese Zviedre admits that the audience will each take a personally important message from the exhibition, for her it is a story about how important it is for us as people to be able to change.
Artūrs Virtmanis’ personal exhibition “Psychopomp: a beginner’s guide to the beyond” will open on Saturday, November 25, in the Dome Hall of the National Art Museum.
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2023-11-22 08:12:48
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