BRUSSELS.- The exhibition Visionary Structures looks at the Latvian avant-garde of the 20th and 21st centuries. It ranges from the constructivists Gustavs Klucis and Kārlis Johansons to the young Voldemārs Johansons.

At the Centre for Fine Arts, you can also see The Limp of A Letter, an installation by the young Latvian artist Ola Vasiljeva.

Visionary Structures traces a vivid trajectory in Latvian art – a view into the most experimental and visionary artistic values of their day and into their historical transformations. It is an encounter between artists and art works, belonging to different eras, yet allowing the viewer to perceive the inheritance of ideas and joint currents in the flow of art developed over time.

In the 1920s, artists Kārlis Johansons and Gustavs Klucis, who belonged to the Constructivists’ group in Moscow, respondent to challenge the art to create a new way in which to materialise the dynamics of social life. They were interested in experiments, which searched for revolutionary forms, and were driven by the confidence that art would be able to embody a new world. Today the works of both artists are at the centre of global avant-garde.

The legacy of Constructivism and futuristic ideas returned to the spotlight in the 1970s, during the Cold War, when Latvia had become one of the republics of the Soviet Union. There were several artists such as Valdis Celms, Jānis Krievs and Artūrs Riņķis who were captivated by the quest for an alternative, ideal space and innovative forms – they came forth with surprising proposals for the residential environment in the city, in the nature and even in the outer space, which internally concentrated the problems of the era and at the same time veered away from the real social space.

At the centre of the works of the youngest generation of artists, Gints Gabrāns and Voldemārs Johansons, in the exhibition are quests that are insinuated in micro-realities. Through coincidental organic forms and systemic ideal structures they interpret the complex processes of both the visible and the invisible reality. The motion of energy and the space of imagination are synthesised in these structures, thus uncovering new visionary worlds.

Kārlis Johansons (1880-1929) belonged to the Constructivist group of artists in Russia. In the early twentieth century, he made splendid spatial structures in 3-D. Over and above the beauty of his constructions, he used them to reflect on how reality is constructed. Successive generations of international artists and architects further developed his ideas.

Curator: Ieva Astahovska

Artists: Kārlis Johansons, Gustavs Klucis, Valdis Celms, Jānis Krievs, Artūrs Riņķis, Gints Gabrāns, Voldemārs Johansons