26.09. - 30.09.2018

Marx Halle

Karl-Farkas-Gasse 19, 1030 Vinna, Austria

Maksla XO gallery at VIENNACONTEMPORARY 2018 –

Exposition by three contemporary Latvian artists “Life of Things” 
Paulis Liepa, Ieva Iltnere and Katrina Neiburga

Stand - F 09

From the 27^th till 30^th of September, 2018, the contemporary art fair viennacontemporary 2018 will take place in Vienna, Austria. At the fair, Maksla XO gallery will present the latest prints by Paulis Liepa, created in his author’s technique, Ieva Iltnere’s newest paintings and Katrina Neiburga’s video installation “Memory of Things”, which previously was displayed at the group exhibition “Ornamentalism. Purvitis Prize. Latvian Contemporary Art” at the 56th Venice Biennale. The unifying link of the exposition is the “Life of Things”, which will reveal itself in a narrative by three different artists and mediums. For each of them, the life of things has its own characteristics.

Paulis Liepa (1978), using seemingly neutral and unpretentious units, reflects on philosophical and current events in a wide range – starting from recent war collision points to simple everyday items and topics, which generally is a diary by the artist as a modern human: studio, home, street, Internet, news, advertisement… This message is not chatty, it’s straightforward, clear, ironic and hearty at the same time. In his author’s technique print works, we can distinguish only one subtle sign to a whole collection of signs, which conceptually and in their content are a search for the truth, a battle for spheres of influences, a control over geographical units, depths of the earth from their cross –sections, a cynical, cold calculation, and the humanity as an infinitely complex mechanism, where the war, unfortunately, is an integral part of its existence.

Ieva Iltnere (1957) analyses the nowadays people’s obsession with material world’s objects collecting, archiving and exhibiting. This obsession to collect artworks and art books,haute couture collections, vinyl records, old photos or souvenirs also is a story about modern consumer society wish to build increasingly impressive cultural layer of objects around themselves to exhibit them later into museums and private collections. It is individual’s obsession which retain cultural achievements in different fields.
In Ieva Iltnere’s latest paintings, the art itself is the centre of the works, or more precisely – the crème de la crème about art. These are stories about artworks and personalities that have become not only the icons of contemporary art, but have also achieved a role of fetish in the consumer society. With a subtle irony and love, Ieva Iltnere’s painted things speak about the passions of nowadays’ individuals, which are not unfamiliar for the painter herself.

Video artist Katrina Neiburga (1978) speaks about deeply personal – the memory of things – in a study of interplay and succession in her own family’s female line in three generations. Women’s position determined by social roles and traditions becomes the subject of the artist’s analysis. Katrina Neiburga’s works characterize the imagery, looking for the transtemporary in mundane details, self-exhibiting and performativeness. Her projects may be seen as egocentric – after all she is getting acquainted with her own time, her own living-space – the city – and her peers.

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