RIGA.- From 15 February to 18 May 2025, the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Riga invites to visit an impressive Baltic contemporary glass art exhibition entitled Layers, embracing the work of 24 talented artists from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

The Baltic glass art exhibition focuses attention on the modern application of glass – the ways how the traditional properties of this material can be used in a contemporary and conceptually ideological context. The atmosphere and mood of the show will immerse the viewer into a beautiful, fragile, and at the same time powerful world expressed through the poetic and slightly mysterious medium.

The title of the project is based on the idea of multidimensionality, uncovering the nature of objects and phenomena from different perspectives. Multilayering can be observed in the earth’s crust, in the atmosphere, and in the perception of any thing. History is also shaped by the layering of events. Nothing has ever been clear-cut; the secret nature is always ambiguous – it can be perceived either in context or subtext.

The exhibition brings together 24 diverse professional artists from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, whose primary medium of self-expression is glass. At the same time, it provides an overview of the current possibilities within the field of glass art and poses a question: what defines the value of a glass artwork – is it the visually irresistible beauty or the conceptual message?

The objects represented at the Baltic contemporary glass art exhibition were judged and selected through a competition by a panel of curators – Kati Kerstna (Estonia), Dalia Truskaitė (Lithuania), Bārbala Gulbe, and Marta Ģibiete (Latvia). The jury also included other local and international experts of the field. Finally, the exposition demonstrates 23 individual and collaborative artworks by 9 artists from Latvia, 7 from Lithuania, and 7 from Estonia.

The show offers a rich spectrum of art – from intricately crafted paintings and glass graphics on paper to large-scale installations, monumental glass piles, and molten glass sculptures. The Baltic dimension of the exhibition allows us to discern the kindred and at the same time assess the differences of perception while viewing the artworks from the neighbouring countries. It helps us to rediscover our own perspectives on glass – the material common to us all – and see how the shared history and related identity of the Baltic States are in an artistic way echoed in it. It is the same Baltic Sea and shores, the same forests, the same grey rain and fog, the long months of darkness, and the closer to the North, the greater the hunger for light.

Exhibition artists:

Latvia: Kārlis Bogustovs, Inita Ēmane, Dainis Gudovskis, Bārbala Gulbe, Marta Ģibiete, IRMA Collaborative (Inguna Audere, Michael Rogers), Anda Munkevica, Artis Nīmanis, Ernests Vītiņš

Estonia: Piret Ellamaa, Erki Kannus, Merle Kannus, Kati Kerstna, Rait Prääts, Maret Sarapu, Tiina Sarapu

Lithuania: Danas Aleksa, Domas Ignatavičius, Remigijus Kriukas, Rūta Lipaitė, Irina Peleckienė, Julija Pociūtė, Dalia Truskaitė

Exhibition curators:

Bārbala Gulbe, Marta Ģibiete (Latvia), Kati Kerstna (Estonia), Dalia Truskaitė (Lithuania)