15.08.- 21.09.2024

Galerija "Māksla XO"

Elizabetes iela 14, Rīga, LV 1010

JANIS MITREVICS

Re-Evolution

Janis Mitrevis is one of the first brilliant postmodernists in Latvian contemporary painting. Member of the Latvian artist group “Gentle Fluctuations”. Since the 1980s, he has been known for his individual neo-expressionist style painting, which can be compared to the mass arrangements of brutalist architecture, the form of expressive volumes and the rough surface texture – ambitious and free painting, playful brutality in strokes, castings and drips of paint. A conceptual approach to painting and creating monumental environmental objects, combined with a touch of witty irony. Janis Mitrevics plays and manipulates with a story and techniques – drawing, photography, computer graphics, silk print and monumental oil painting. Over the last twenty years, Janis Mitrevics and his company, Dd Studio, have received international recognition for creating museum exhibitions in Latvia and abroad. He has received awards at FIAMP (Festival International de l’Audiovisuel et du Multimedia sur le Patrimoine) several times for digital and multimedia exhibition projects and the special award EMYA (European Museum of the Year Award) for the Riga Stradins University Anatomy Museum (2023) and The Petroglyph Museum in Gobustan, Azerbaijan (2013).
In his latest solo exhibition, “Re-evolution,” Janis Mitrevics offers the viewer his paintings, including social criticism, cultural revision, and his own transformation. (Ilze Zeivate)

In the solo exhibition “Re-evolution,” we see a revival of Janis Mitrevics’ monumental, expressively colourful, and sometimes surreal figuralism, in which the main character is primarily a man – precisely a “rebellion of men.” One of Janis Mitrevics’ central works in this exhibition is titled “Young Man.” The newborn’s head is adorned with a glow that evokes a sacred aura and a surprising pop-art touch reminiscent of comic aesthetics. How to understand? References and paraphrases, spontaneous flow of impressions and ironic comments create a well-known Janis Mitrevics’ “disorder”, where the viewer is always given a lot of trust to make judgments in thematic and formal terms.
“Change has always been and always will be; progress is an outdated concept,” admits Janis Mitrevics, and in the pluralism light offering us to reflect about men, women, children, seniors, communities, AI, and, of course, the painting. (Inga Steimane, 2024) 

Janis Mitrevics (1957) graduated from the Monumental Painting Department of the Art Academy of Latvia (1982–1976). Since 1984, he has organised 20 personal exhibitions and participated in more than 50 important group exhibitions in Latvia and abroad. Since 2000, he has been one of the leading creative directors of the architecture and design of museum exhibitions in Latvia – the exhibition of the new building of the Ventspils Seaside Open-Air Museum (2024), the Riga Stradins University Anatomy Museum (2017), the permanent exhibition of the Latvian National Museum of Art (2016); In Azerbaijan – the permanent exhibition of Azerbaijani oil in the SOCAR building in Baku (2018), the Petroglyph Museum in Gobustan (2013), and significant exhibitions of the National Art Museum of Azerbaijan (2018–2012).
Janis Mitrevics’ paintings and environmental objects are in public collections – the Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga, Latvia), Rothko Museum (Daugavpils, Latvia), the Latvian Artists’ Union Museum (Riga, Latvia), the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University (Norton and Nancy Dodge Art Collection: Nonconformist Art of Soviet Union, 1956–1986), (New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA), the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia).