“Summer Exhibition at Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center – Featuring Legendary Latvian Artists and International Works”

On Friday, June 2, the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center will open the summer season with an exhibition of a legendary group of Latvian artists and powerful art projects from Great Britain, Poland and Ukraine.

In Daugavpils, the works of Polish modernist classic Stefan Gerowski (1925–2022) will be on display. Art historian David Anpham once compared his work to the works of Mark Rothko and John Hoyland. Gerovskis has been working in the field of abstract painting since the 1950s, studying the dual nature of light. The importance of the artist’s work is also confirmed by his representation in the world’s most important galleries. The exhibition “Stefans Gerovskis: from here to eternity” awakens spiritual and emotional memories in the viewer with bright large-format canvases, write representatives of the Rothko Center.

The range of summer exhibitions will also include the works of British artist Jane Bastin. Her creative practice spans painting, ceramics, installation, text, film and performance. Her works have been widely exhibited both in the homeland and abroad. Personal exhibitions have been held in London, Berlin, New York, Paris, Sydney, Auckland and now also in Latvia. In the Rothko Center, the audience will be offered the works “The Color of Words” created right here in Daugavpils. It is the artist’s attempt to create a conversation with the invisible paintings of Rothko in his hometown and the images hidden in them, as well as to share insights about the influence of place, color, sound and image on her creative practice.

Daugavpils is the hometown of not a single artistic and cultural excellence. The Russian avant-garde artist Solomon Gershov (1906–1989), who was born here, was an artist with a tragic fate – he was twice exiled and experienced all the cruelty of the Soviet repressive system on his own skin. Even in the Vorkuta camp, despite exhaustion, illness and the ever-present death, he secretly continued his creative work. In order to avoid the telltale smell of paint, in most cases the works were made with a graphite pencil. 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”.

To a modern person, the inhuman nature of deportations seems typical of the absurdity of mass wars and aggressive ideologies of the last century. However, the events in Ukraine prove otherwise. The interdisciplinary exhibition “How I ended up in a bomb shelter” visualizes the experiences of seven Ukrainian artists who came face to face with war. The artists’ reflections displayed in the exhibition have been inspired by their private wartime experiences gained after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, longing for a peaceful life, each person’s personal path to survival and hopes for a better future. Kinder Album, Mihailo Barabaš, Yaroslav Kostenko, Serhiys Petlyuks, Olena Subača, Sviter art group and Maksim Finogeevs participate in the exhibition.

During the summer season, the Rothko center will also display the works of the artist group “Gentle Oscillations”. Ieva Iltnere, Sandra Krastiņa, Jānis Mitrēvics, Įrts Muižnieks and Edgars Vērpe will take part 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 legendary exhibition-action “Gentle Oscillations” (1990 ) gave the group a brand and a name. The nerve of time undeniably 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 under which they can safely a signature of the author’s own lived experience and conviction. This summer, the legendary group of artists gathers in almost full strength at the Rothko Center to once again reflect on the zeitgeist, current socio-political upheavals and their imprint on artistic creativity in the “Fluctuations” exhibition,” the creators of the exhibition write.

The summer exhibition season will be open to visitors until August 27, 2023. During the opening event of the season, on June 2, from At 16.00, the new exhibitions can be viewed for free.
Representatives of the Rothko Center also remind that the British artist John Hoyland’s exhibition “Doors of Perception: The Paintings of John Hoyland” is still open during the summer season. At the end of June, the international ceramics symposium “Ceramic Laboratory” will complement the summer season with an exhibition of contemporary ceramics. On the other hand, original works by Mark Rothko have been available in the permanent exhibition since April 27.