VINETA KAULACA

Overlays

“We see with memory, so if I know someone well, I see them differently from the way I might if I’ve just met them”- David Hockney.

"In the latest works, the relationship between the capricious and the perpetual are explored through the language of painting, choosing situations that bring to a halt – directly or figuratively. The halt and the rupture of movement is the motive of the exhibition, and at the same time a necessity of the content to touch upon that part of historical memory, which transmits information at the memory DNA level from one generation to another.
Memory shapes space. With a help of memory, what you’ve just seen overlaps with what you saw a moment ago – creating a depth to the visible. The necessity to see and observe is related to experiencing sensations and being aware of the experience. It forms a relationship with the flow of time, the space of thought amid the emerging and the past, and the personal sense of time. Memory creates overlays in the experience – among the things that have passed by, and those that have stayed. The borders of the overlay blend in-between the illusory reality and the reality of illusion.
A reflection as a world perceiving eye – a projection of the vision, and at the same time – memory. The constant expansion of personal, as well as historical memory keeps diminishing a chance to see for the first time.  “We live in an era in which we are more likely to witness things for the last time than for the first: disappearances in and of the visible world, rather than discoveries” – says art historian and curator Lars Bang Larsen.
A captured glance of the visible becomes a certain reference point for the further painting process, which in its time-consuming nature condenses the tension between the fast and the slow, the fixed and the experienced. It is like a starting point for a further journey into the creation of painting, where memory is simultaneously confronted with the work process and the substantiality. The occurrence, reproduced with the help of memory, has created a completely new space, a non-existent space in our consciousness up until now, even though initial coordinates can be found in the map of space and time.
The time and the time capacity are those values, why in the painting process I see a need to choose a photographically captured glance as a certain point of reference, which carries within itself information about the past form of time. It is essential to reach progressing dynamics of the painting, and discover through this process a new structure of the image and its meaning. The painting process, expanded in time, reveals itself to the viewer simultaneously and contains information within itself, which grows along with the painting and cannot be predicted beforehand. The painting always contains information in the form of time of present continuous.
Motion and the relationship of speed and slowness is a motive, and at the same time a necessity of the content, studying ontological differences of painting and photography. For me, the questions of perception are very essential, the place of painting as a medium, and a possibility of an increasing geometrical progression during the production time of the image. For identification of this relationship, I adopt my personal visual language experience in painting and photography. Painting is substantial, it leaves a space for a touch, a possibility to maybe even touch upon that impulse, which led to some of the snapshots; and this I find more relevant than the optical transmission of the visible. Assuming that time is the speed of changes, capturing movement is one of the ways to notice it" - Vineta Kaulaca.

Vineta Kaulaca (1971) has a Master’s degree from the Art Academy of Latvia (2002). She has studied at the Berlin Art University, at the Visual Communication department (1999-2000, Germany) and at Humboldt State University, at the Photo and Painting departments (1995-1996, California, USA). She has been participating at exhibitions since 1990, and been part of more than 80 group shows, and organized 26 solo shows in Latvia and abroad.
Her recent exhibitions include solo show Overlays, Maksla XO gallery, Riga, Latvia (2018); solo show Kaleidoscope, Permanent Representation of Latvia to the European Union, Brussels, Belgium (2017);Women Power, Mayson Gallery, New York, USA (2017); Arte Laguna Prize finalists exhibition at the Arsenale, Venice, Italy (2017); Hiperrealism – Movement Manifestations in Latvia, exhibition hall Arsenals of the Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia (2017); Surface Memory, Maksla XO gallery, Riga, Latvia (2016);  Failed Utopias, the No.4A gallery, Malvern, UK (2016); The London Intensive, the Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (2015);  Latvian ArtMonth, Abu Dhabi Art Hub and Jumeirah& Etihad Towers, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (2015); Latvian Contemporary Art, European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium (2015); ”Transfers / 56°56′51″N 24°6′23″E”, the Joyart Gallery, 798 Art Zone, Beiing, China (2014); NordArt2013, Kunstwerk Carlshütte, Büdelsdorf, Germany (2013);  Fresh Latvian Painting, Art House Tartu, Estonia (2012); Centre-Periphery, Palazzo delle Esposizione, Rome (2012).
Her works are in public collections: Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga, Latvia), Art in Embassies. US Embassy (Riga, Latvia), Federculture (Rome, Italy), The European Parliament (Brussels, Belgium), Imago Mundi, Luciano Benetton collection (Italy), ABLV Bank Contemporary Art Collection (Riga, Latvia), Contemporary Art Collection of Swedbank (Riga, Latvia).
Vineta Kaulaca lives and works in Riga, Latvia.