Trajectory 1 - "The Sun on the Wall"

Exhibition Hall "Arsenals" of the National Museum of Art, Riga

23 March until 23 April 2006

Curator Gregor Podnar (Slovenia) has indented to update the tradition of conceptualism and the influence it had on criticism that emerged in the 1960s.

""The Sun on the Wall" is a group exhibition that links to the oevre of Latvian artist Bruno Vasiļevskis (1937-1990), whose paintings we use as a starting point to enhance a rethinking of "conceptual" art practices. Contemporary and historical art works will be, on one hand, juxtaposed with Bruno Vasiļevskis' heritage, and on the other - the aim of the exhibition is to display works by artists of different generations working under post-conceptual conditions.

"Post-conceptual conditions" stands for a deliberately chosen expression alluding to Post-Communist Conditions, a title of a symposium organized in 2004 by Boris Groys, that does not refer to any theoretical term but relates to a retrospective view on simultaneous art movements all over Europe growing of different political, social and artistic conditions. "The Sun on the Wall" exhibition, entitled after one of Vasiļevskis' paintings from 1976, is focused on art works from Northern and Eastern parts of Europe, deriving from the simple fact that this is a main working area of the curator.

The exhibition tries to induce a dialogue within general verdicts of the conceptual movements in art since 1960s until nowadays. Historical works, connected with parameters of serial art production, the dematerialization of the art object and of a text related anti-aesthetical attitude, restate the contemporary works, and vice versa.

The exhibition aims to focus on formally strong art pieces, representing a more "idealistic" note of the art production of the last forty years. The works of the exhibition are opening up poetical strata, trajecting aesthetical and socially loaded content rather by visual means than by "pure" context of sociological and sometimes illustrative nature."
(Gregor Podnar)
IRWIN group

Artist group IRWIN from Slovenia has been working with various media since 1983, from painting to public art, from sculptural works and installations to publishing. Following their "retro principle", the five-member-group utilizes and combines different motifs, symbols and signs from the fields of politics and art, which result in transformation of their historical meaning and content, and in re-contextualisation and deconstruction of their related ideologies.

East.Art.Map is a project developed by IRWIN and is a tool that leads you through the last 50 years of the visual arts in Eastern Europe. It contains information about 250 artists, events, projects proposed by 24 art critics, curators, artists and is open for further development.

For more information see: http://www.lcca.lv/projects/trajectory_1/