NYAB Event - “Let’s Talk About Painting” Exhibition

“Let’s Talk About Painting” Exhibition

Gallery Onetwentyeight

This event has ended.

Gallery onetwentyeight presents Let’s Talk About Painting, an exhibition featuring works by two distinguished painters from Latvia – Professor Aleksejs Naumovs, Rector of the Art Academy of Latvia, and Professor Kristaps Zarins, Vice-Rector of the Art Academy of Latvia.

The exhibition will feature both recent paintings and large-scale works created in plein-air in New York shortly before the opening of the exhibition. As it has been characteristic to the oeuvre of Aleksejs Naumovs throughout his career, the works on show will be large-scale and made using the alla prima technique – painted in a dynamic atmosphere on location in New York, in one go. The making of the paintings will be captured in photographs and on video, thus emphasizing the importance of the process – from the first touch of the brush to the canvas until the final stroke of paint.

Telling about the work on the forthcoming exhibition, the artists like to draw parallels with the project Reflections of Europe and its concluding event – exhibition Budapest, Riga, Venice, Vienna – European Cities in the Paintings of Latvian Artists. Within the framework of the project, which was carried out back in 2011, Aleksejs Naumovs and Kristaps Zarins travelled to four European capitals and painted the cities in plein-air, documenting the process on video and releasing a DVD. Painting in open air and in direct contact with the surroundings is still important to both artists. As Aleksejs Naumovs recently commented to the art and culture portal Arterritory.com, “at the moment I am inspired by large-format paintings – two, three meters in width. Painting takes place in nature and the process is filmed. Actually, it’s a situation. Rain, snow, sun and people are a distraction, but actually it is part of the deal. For large-scale paintings I don’t prepare sketches, I just try to feel myself in nature and attempt to capture this illusion on canvas.”

For Aleksejs Naumovs, exhibition Let’s Talk About Painting will be already the second chance to paint New York. For the first time the artist worked in New York in 1995 when he had a unique chance to portray the urban jungle of Manhattan from the deck of a yacht near the Brooklyn Bridge. Paintings created at the time have already travelled the world and been exhibited both in Latvia and abroad.

The show at gallery onetwentyeight will be accompanied by a discussion on painting. In the discussion Aleksejs Naumovs and Kristaps Zarins will be joined by representatives of museums and American art and design universities.

The exhibition Let’s Talk About Painting is part of the Sharing Experience project that was made possible thanks to the invitation of the owner of the gallery onetwentyeight Kazuko Miyamoto and Latvian curator Marina Goldena.

Aleksejs Naumovs (1955) has graduated from the Department of Monumental Painting of the Art Academy of Latvia and later received a French government scholarship to study painting at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Since 2007, Aleksejs Naumovs is the Rector of the Art Academy of Latvia. Both as an artist and arts administrator, he is active on the Latvian art scene: a member of numerous competition juries, has been the cultural attaché of the Republic of Latvia to France and a guest professor at many art academies in Europe. He has been the initiator, leader, exchange program organizer and exhibition curator for various collaborative art projects in Italy, France, Japan, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Russia, the USA and elsewhere. Naumovs is an outstanding plein-air painter. He has regularly participated in exhibitions since 1979, has taken part in and organized more than 50 group exhibitions and art projects, promoting the creative activities of students, and developing international contacts and cooperation with art academies in various parts of the world. He has held 60 solo exhibitions.

Kristaps Zarins (1962) is Vice-Rector at the Art Academy of Latvia and an active artist, regularly organizing and taking part in exhibitions. He has graduated from the Department of Painting of the Art Academy of Latvia. Since 1994, Kristaps Zarins is Professor at the Art Academy of Latvia, since 2007 – Vice-Rector in Creative and Administrative Work. Has taken part in exhibitions since 1979. Kristaps Zarins’ works have regularly been on display in solo and group shows in Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Germany, Denmark, France, Morocco, the Netherlands, Japan, Norway and elsewhere. Kristaps Zarins works with color and form, founded in realism. His most frequently chosen form is the image of a woman, which transforms into the strong mythological character Judith, caryatides, supple flowers or the personifications of ages. Kristaps Zarins’ painting is unfettered and friendly, nevertheless, it has its share of irony or heated emotions.

The organizers of the exhibition wish to acknowledge with gratitude the generous support of the Boris and Inara Teterev Foundation, the Embassy of Latvia in the USA, the Art Academy of Latvia and the Technology Transfer Contact Point of the Art Academy of Latvia.