Exhibition > Past > ArtDepoo

ArtDepoo 06.05.2008-31.05.2008

Two Colourful Worlds

An Estonian August Künnapu and Latvian Andris Vītoliņš are friends, they share their views and they are artists, who, though testing other artistic medias, have remained true to painting. And both of them are painters par excellence. Last year Künnapu received one of the most distinguished art prizes – the one named after Konrad Mägi and Andris, the teacher of the Riga Academy of Arts, has been awarded in his homeland with several approving prizes. Two top figures of the contemporary art of the Baltic States are joined besides friendship and similar views of art by a positively luxated and bright world perception. At the first joint exhibition in the ArtDepoo gallery the public is demonstrated bright-coloured and playful personal worlds of the artists. The machines and technical landscapes, painted by Andris with a deep curiosity and in a detailed passion, are standing next to the children having been painted by August. The joint part of the paintings that at a visual inspection are of averse themes is the human being and the environment created by him. And of course the depiction of the colourful, but shifted reality in a nostalgic retro-key. The works of the artists are holding a wordless dialogue in the exhibition hall and they form entangling couples, complementing each other.

On the paintings by August Künnapu, inspired by the photos from the 1930ies, besides people a room and an environment are also being examined. Small inhabitants are posing to their father´s photo camera in the recently built apartment building at Raua street and near it. The artist himself has also been living in the same house since his early childhood. The unique photos were found from the private archive of Helga Nõu, a famous Estonian children book writer, whose childhood together with two of her brothers was also spent in the apartment building Raua 8, designed by Herbert Johanson. Even though the paintings are based on concrete photos, the paintings by Künnapu are not cold calculations, being photo realistic in a sterile way. On the faces of excellently posing “little old people” is reflected the severity and life experience, being characteristic to the period that in today’s context could seem slightly alienated.

Similarly to the sources of Künnapu the paintings by Vītoliņš are also based on photos, radiating positive energy and rhythm. The theme of his paintings is in the context of contemporary art either marginal or generally ignored. Machines, cranes, urbanistic factory buildings, bridge and harbour constructions are transformed by the luminous colour handling and precise one-breath brushstrokes of Andris into desirable iconic symbols of the modern era. Metal constructions and locomotives do not seem cold or machine-like, they are rather poetic; in them can be clearly felt the presence of man, Andris has given them soul. In his urban paintings Vītoliņš scrutinizes, how human mind, will and activity is able to change the natural environment. So the paintings are simultaneously portraits of persons and of the machines, created by them.

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