Maksla XO Gallery at POSITIONS BERLIN Art Fair 2020

Booth - A16

www.positions.de

Artists: Anna Heinrihsone, Roman Korovin, Paulis Liepa, Michel Castaignet

At POSITIONS BERLIN Art Fair 2020 "Maksla XO" gallery presents the works of four contemporary artists from Latvia and France – Anna Heinrihsone, Roman Korovin, Paulis Liepa and Michel Castaignet.

Anna Heinrihsone (1970) is one of the most renowned contemporary costume and stage designers in Latvia with international experience. In parallel to stage, costume design and exhibition design, Anna Heinrihsone also works in visual art – painting and drawing, regularly organizing solo shows and participating in group exhibitions. Similarly to her stage designs, bright and original characters are also distinctive in her paintings. Anna Heinrihsone’s works create an absolutely solitary world of images, in which every new work can be perceptible as a sequel of the last. In her paintings, the artist has directness typical to the drawing of children, and it leads us into ironical, stinging and tragicomic world of images.
For the last couple of years Anna Heinrihsone has used photographs from the family archive (from 1930s till 1950s) as a motif for her paintings. Focusing on the moments where the protagonists are liberated and emotionally close to one another – first bike ride as a couple, skier who isn’t confident about her skills, mother kicking a soccer ball – within the paintings it all is turned into a long, visual line. What happens behind the scenes  of the photograph is the continuation in the painting. The black-and-white picture of the past turns into an imaginary act. In miniature painting format, the motif of a photo comes to life from black and white to colour, expanding and showing what is not seen in the small, antique-framed, old-fashioned photograph.

Roman Korovin. Pretzel. One Side and Other Side. 2020 oil on canvas,2x-18x24 cm

Defined by the poetics of the anti-sublime, Roman Korovin’s (1973) works are created as witty and anecdotal series of episodes, most often grouped in diptychs or triptychs, thus creating new meanings in mutual interaction. His photography, drawing, video and installation are characterized by precise observation, visual paradoxes and humor about ordinary objects and everyday episodes. Roman Korovin’s painting, however, leads us to reflect on the painting itself - the chiaroscuro, contrasts, semi-tones - where the depicted object can be brought to abstraction. His painting shines quietly with a particular picturesque sensuality, simplicity and truthfulness. Melting snow, autumn leaves, white flower, duck in flight, wind, glass, soap holder, birch tree and its shadow, road between a pine tree and a bush... these are the modest heroes of Roman Korovin’s stories about painting, inviting to a meditation on timeless themes, while retaining artist’s philosophical tendency to “joke”.
Roman Korovin (1973) has graduated from the department of Graphic Art at the Art Academy of Latvia (1997). He participates in exhibitions since 1991. In collaboration with curators such as Viktor Misiano, Mark Gisborn, Harald Szeemann, Kristin Dittrich, Alise Tifentala, Daiga Rudzate, Iliana Veinberga, Solvita Krese, Ieva Kalnina and others, Roman Korovin’s artworks have been exhibited in many European countries as well as USA.

Paulis Liepa (1978) – currently one of the best known Latvian graphic artists with his own bright and recognizable style. The aesthetics of his works have evolved from various influences of the modernist graphic culture of the 20th century, design, architecture and engineering blueprints, especially looking back at the visual aesthetics of the 60’s and 70’s, which the artist uses as his language of expression. To amplify this effect of “oldness”, Paulis Liepa  exposes his work to direct environmental influences – coagulated layers of glue, cardboard pieces scratched with knife, layers of paint, one over another, creating a sense that the have been abandoned and forgotten somewhere and rediscovered today. With subtle irony about graphic artists’ obsession with perfect and aestheticized image, works of Paulis Liepa “overstep” this occupational etiquette.
Paulis Liepa has graduated from the Graphic Department of the Art Academy of (1997-2003). Since 1996, he has organized 16 solo shows in Latvia, Estonia, Denmark and Russia and participated in more than 50 group shows and international projects in Latvia and abroad. His works are in public collections – Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga, Latvia), Art Collection Deutsche Telekom (Berlin, Germany), KAI|10 Arthena Foundation (Dusseldorf, Germany), Simmons Contemporary (London, UK), Kaliningrad State Art Gallery (Kaliningrad, Russia).

Michel Castaignet (1971) has been engaged in a graphical reduction of the world for several years now, looking for a new rapport between drawing and painting.
"My notebooks record my formal mediations. I incessantly arrange shapes within the space of the sheet. Alike some writing that would constantly engrave the present time, like a diary, I talk about the transience of the world though a succession of equilibrium of simple shapes. In the Atelier I then curate those drawings and classify them in order to reproduce them on different supports. First were glass paintings taken from these notebooks. This year it is a selection of paintings recalling landscapes. The plain and colourful shapes become signs and their balances create minimal landscape that invite the viewer to reflect about the impermanence of the world” – Michel Castaignet.
Michel Castaignet has organized 15 solo shows in France, Latvia and Russia, and participated in more than 40 group exhibitions in France, Latvia, Russia, Austria, Lithuania, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Belgium, United Kingdom, Spain and Germany. He regularly exhibits his works at “Maksla XO” gallery in Riga and “Nivet-Carzon” gallery in Paris.

Support:
On the 18th of April 2016 Mākslas galerija Māksla XO Ltd. has signed an agreement Nr. SKV-L-2016/57 with Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA)  for the project "International competitiveness promotion", which is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.