16.10. - 06.12.2025

Galerija "Māksla XO"

Elizabetes iela 14, Rīga, LV 1010

MAIJA KURŠEVA

FAIR COPY

Acrylic paint strokes that are holding cut-out drawings on the wall blur boundaries between drawing and sculpture, abstraction and representation. A line is a recording device for a wandering imagination. It flows and curls, hides under the rocks, looking for a new path through the darkness. (Maija Kurševa, 2023.)

For Maija Kurševa, drawing has always been at the bedrock of the artist’s ideas, and it also functions as the method of taking notes of thoughts that pop up on a daily basis. In her new exhibition “Fair Copy”, the artist continues to develop ideas of abstraction and spatial drawing, creating collages of paper cut-outs and acrylic brushstrokes. The exhibition is structured in three notional parts: black lines and white surfaces emphasising black-and-white contrast and abstraction; collages of coloured planes highlighting the power of primary colours and the spatial interplay of negative forms that reveal the presence of absence; and a small retrospective glance at the origins of the artist’s formal methods, with drawings that affirm the enduring significance of this medium in her practice.
Maija Kurševa’s aesthetic choice is a striving for purity, order, and clarity – qualities that resonate with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion of artistic practice as a strategy for confronting chaos. Her works are graphic, beautiful, and meticulously executed gestures, open to interpretation. The formal methods she employs invite the viewer to an affective perception, free from literary overlays.
For Maija Kurševa, the economy of visual means and the interplay between the elements that constitute her works are of fundamental importance. She pays particular attention to the agency of materials and to the basic components of graphic art: the point, the line, the plane, space, and movement. Equally essential is the principle of self-reference, formed through the internal logic of formal techniques – drawings curved by gravity or representing it, and the use of positive and negative forms.

These are thoughts about a drawing and a line. How to show the flow of thoughts, without using a language? Image on the paper is confined in plane. The line can be carried into space, forced to the gravity, provided with the potential of movement. The colour of the gouache is deeply black, matte and pleasant, the paper cut-out gouache lines on the wall are retained with a brown touch of acrylic. Minimal and flowing shapes do not attempt to portray anything specific, but in observation, the mind forms associations and seeks the recognizable. The process of the work is intuitive – one thing leads to the next. Here we see the waypoint, not the end. (Maija Kurševa, 2019.)

Meeting. 2025, paper cut-out, acrylic, 100x140 cm

Maija Kurševa’s line works are minimalist and seemingly abstract – they give the impression that the artist has traced the contour of emptiness, creating a sinuous transition from stillness to movement, from form to immateriality, symbolising limitation and disappearance, tension and release. (Urszula Usakowska-Wolff / Kunst Dunst, 29.04.2022.)

Maija Kurševa (1981) works across drawing, spatial structures, installations, moving image, and printmaking. Her works and exhibitions have been repeatedly nominated for the prestigious THE PURVĪTIS AWARD. In 2022, during the international paper art fair PAPER POSITIONS Berlin, Maija Kurševa received the PAPER ART AWARD for her series “Black Lines”, an award given to women artists to highlight a unique approach to contemporary works created on and from paper. In 2021, her drawings were included in Phaidon’s significant anthology dedicated to contemporary drawing: “Vitamin D3: Today’s Best in Contemporary Drawing”.
Maija Kurševa graduated from the Art Academy of Latvia, Department of Visual Communication (2008). She was co-founder and editor of Popper Publishing (2012–2018), and also initiated and curated the Riga Zine Festival (2016, 2018). She has participated in international artist residencies, including Kai (Tallinn, Estonia, 2020), ISCP (New York, USA, 2019), Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, France, 2019), and IASPIS (Umeå, Sweden, 2013). Since 2004, her works have been exhibited both in Latvia and abroad. In 2025, she participated in the 19th Tallinn Graphics Triennial (Tallinn, Estonia), the EDEN International Art Festival (Kim?, Riga, Latvia), and the MABOCA Festival (Madona, Latvia).
Maija Kurševa lives and works in Riga. She teaches composition and screen printing at the Art Academy of Latvia within the programme: Movement. Image. Sound.
Her works are included in public collections: the Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga, Latvia), the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art Collection (Riga, Latvia), and the VV Foundation Collection (Riga, Latvia).