10.02.2011. - 08.03.2011.

Galerija "Māksla XO"

Elizabetes iela 14, Rīga, LV 1010

Ivars Heinrihsons WAY"

Māksla XO Gallery from 10.02. - 08.03.2011

Ivars Heinrihsons is a brilliant represenative of neo-expressionism in Latvian contemporary painting. He has a sophisticated achromatic palette in which the black line or field is the basis for everything - both expression and stability.

The use of opposites embraces the whole of Ivars Heinrihsons' creativity in both the system of images and colours used as well as in the brushwork. Black and the white, light and dark, stillness and movement, breathing in and breathing out - everything is pulsating, there is mutual exchange of one for the other, mutual attraction, intertwining and repulsion.

Ivars Heinrihson's latest solo exhibition WAY opens up the whole world of the artist. On the one hand it appears to be defined and embodies concrete images and forms but on the other, it is revealed as chaos that has to be put in order.

Ivars Heinrihson's painting is a result of intense thinking revealed in imaginary form. The tangles and shafts of lines are expressions of the "I" that is unconscious but upon which everything rests. The painting becomes an experience and simultaneously understanding. In it we sense an apparent incompleteness of the drawing and composition in which a line is ready to shoot out again onto the canvas or paper.

It is this unpredictable yet sensed line that is characteristic of all Heinrihsons' works be it in painting, drawing or in the twisted forms metal wire. That is why his works are difficult to frame - the brush strokes extend beyond the confines of the canvas. The figures of horses, the hand gestures and leg movements of ballerinas and piano wires are not conducive to limitations.

Some will always try (pontlessly) to cricise Ivars Heinrihsons for his unchanging themes - horses, the ballet, pianos and people in the city. However, these are not themes but a system of images that personifies a person's ego (including Heinrihsons'), its primal nature, spirit and intellect. These are both thoughts and body and mind that contain all the opposites - struggles and anxieties (the horse).

This is also explained by the artist himself:

 "The piano and horse - these are forms of expression of the inner "me".

The horse as natural expression, gesture and calligraphy. The horse is like a sign, the most appropriate for what is within me. For that which gives me aspiration.

The piano is a sign of culture, something fundamental. The piano makes you put yourself in order.

Classical ballet with its style and clarity of motifs leads one to aspire to the ideal, the fragile and the white."

   Ilze Žeivate mag.art.

   Gallery Māksla XO 2011

    Translation by Andris Mellakauls