12.03. - 18.04.2026

Galerija "Māksla XO"

Elizabetes iela 14, Rīga, LV 1010

SANDRA STRĒLE

Look – In The Surf, A Goldfish! Now Make A Wish!

We fished.
Each on our own jetty.
Each in our own hour.
Each caught a goldfish.

My first wish was to be where you were.
You wished the same.
Our paths didn’t cross.

The second time
we swapped places yet again.
The third time, had we agreed on a meeting point,
one of us would have had to stay with the other.
I always chose home.
You did the same.
…

Yesterday when we meet
I forgot to ask
how your goldfish was doing.    /Sandra Strēle, 2025./

In her artistic practice, Sandra Strēle explores expanded forms of painting, creating large-scale series in which narratives, motifs, and figures develop and transform, forming continuous storylines. These may be universally resonant, rooted in everyday experience, or deeply intimate and personal to the artist. Figures migrate from one painting to another, generating new interpretations and layers of meaning.
In her latest series, “Look – In The Surf, A Goldfish! Now Make A Wish!”, Sandra Strēle continues the theme introduced in her 2025 solo exhibition “The Night Before” at the Mark Rothko Museum in Daugavpils: the human aspiration to find harmony and happiness, to encounter another person with whom to share this sense of fulfilment, and to remain at peace against the backdrop of a turbulent world.
Central to the series is the image of the goldfish – a figure we have trusted since childhood as the embodiment of the promise that anything is possible. Emphasising the significance of this symbol, rooted in ancient Chinese mythology and associated with happiness, prosperity, peace, and good fortune – as well as with the power to attract positive energy and ward off misfortune – the artist invites reflection on the meaning of our wishes and our faith in them at a time when the global order feels unstable and unsettling.
In the paintings, garden gnomes fish for goldfish and search for compromises; daisies invite us to play the game of “loves me, loves me not”; lights are switched on in certain windows, while elsewhere a goldfish is admired in an aquarium.
Sandra Strēle’s distinctive imagery and her refined paint-dripping technique allow the monumental canvases to be experienced with a sense of playfulness and lightness – even as they balance on narrow, elongated footbridges suspended above mysterious depths of water. (Ilze Zeivate, 2026.)

Sandra Strēle (1991) graduated from the Painting Department of the Art Academy of Latvia (2010–2016) and furthered her studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (2014). She has received grants for supporting emerging artists from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (2025, 2021, 2019, Montreal, Canada), the Baltic regional Young Painter Prize (2019, YPP), the SEB Scholarship in Painting (2016, Riga, Latvia), and a scholarship in the arts from the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation (2012, Riga, Latvia). Most significant recent exhibitions: 2025 – “The Night Before”, Rothko Museum, Daugavpils, Latvia; 2023 – “Exhibitions that never happened: Thickets”, Riga Contemporary Art Space, Riga, Latvia.
Her works are held in public collections: the Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga, Latvia), the Lithuanian National Gallery of Art (Vilnius, Lithuania), and the Noewe Foundation (Vilnius, Lithuania).