Moving Toward Silence
Vilnis Vējš
15/05/2011
An interview with Kristaps Ģelzis, Latvia’s representative at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.
Tell us about Venice! By now everything is surely thought out… What can we expect to see there?
That’s the weightiest topic. Nothing is clearly, everything changes… There’s a resistance taking place.
???
For example, size. I had to get new paper, which was brought in rolls from Germany. The space requires that the width be two meters. The whole time I had painted on vatmen, but this paper hasn’t been tested. It absorbs water, therefore it’s hard to flood the surface. You really have to wet it, particularly on account of its great size—while one end is wet, the other has already caught. Things like that. I had thought that I’d begin the work at home, but now I’ve put it aside—I’ll work on a blank page, onsite.
The entire work will be created in Venice?
The exhibition will be in two zones. One is displayed in blue lights, similar to the original plan; but the other is in the entry zone, which will be lit in the usual way. This will feature “clean” watercolors, which should be in the same manner but without all those electronic effects. I’ve spent this entire time getting a hang of it, but that’s been a blessing. I figured out what to do, so that all the bad things that could happen have already been tried out. The approach will be old-fashioned—it will concentrate on painting. But I must admit that I’m not a painter, and it’s very difficult for me to do it. I’m flirting a bit with the execution, not with painting. That’s usually the case—whatever you don’t know how to do, comes out best. Another object was submitted to the project, in the entry space. This was in a “vizkom” [the Latvian Academy of Art’s Visual Communication Department –V.V.] style, “designerly painterly.” I’ve gotten rid of it. There will only be pure color paintings, which must express some sort of mood. The written announcement part will be in the catalogue, and also partly on one picture.
Have you already tried out the blue lights?
There was a very substantial event in Cēsis [Cēsis Art Festival 2009 –V.V.]. This time the content will come from nothing.
It will depend on how the viewer senses himself in the space. OK, a small annotation will help move people in the right direction in terms of perspective, but after that it will depend on each person alone whether or not he perceives the mood. If someone understands it completely differently, let him! It’s important for this to have enough power to move someone in the first place.
So you will try to move people with painting?
You can’t call it any other way…
Is painting more moving that other media?
I think that the proportions of field influence us. Of course, it won’t be like looking at a framed painting and abstracting from the place where it’s located. The works will also be incorporated in the overall context insofar as they will be watery. When you go to Venice, you feel a different atmosphere there and a different tone. There’s a completely different blue. I think that the pictures will be closer to that, not just a transfer of a whining, Latvian-style mood to Venice. I’m creating the work by taking into account where it will be located, and how I think it should harmonize with the place. Not with the specific space, but with Venice. When you, having shuffled your way through all the streets, between the canals, waters, and characters, suddenly arrive in a place, it shouldn’t be too discordant. I don’t want to be like a dictator and force upon people a work of art that everybody whispers about, saying that it definitely must be seen, it doesn’t matter in which part of the world. Let’s assume that if there is a plan to later exhibit this work in Riga, then I must seriously think in what place to do it. In Cēsis, where it was first proven that this type of creative product has an effect, the context was important too. There as well, the works were painted at home; but in the end I took them down and repainted them all onsite. You can’t export a mood. I expect that the viewer will feel better if he sees that everything was done onsite. You can always tell whether a work has simply been brought away and cleared off, or if the space is completely transformed… But the budget isn’t enough for me to be a “lord of the space.”
Do you have a personal relationship with Venice?
I have personal impressions, which don’t have any relation with professional matters. I don’t have a professional relationship with Venice, if that’s to be understood as regularly traveling to biennales over the course of twenty years. I have had personal experiences, just like anybody else.
These experiences influence my sense of color. Not in terms of approach or narrative, but in the direction of inexpressible visions. This direction moves toward a harmonious indifference. The more stable I feel in art (the complete opposite of everyday life!), the easier it is to shun the ambitious part. If you really want to attach all sorts of extras to a work of art, that can even be a hindrance. It’s like wrapping an artwork’s true core, its priorities, in a wad of cotton. I don’t have a hundred percent conviction about what, precisely, I should be doing right now, but somehow intuitively, with Daiga’s [Daiga Rudzāte, the commissar of the exhibition –V.V.] assistance, I am slowly getting used to the idea that to get rid of redundancy would be a good solution.
You mentioned ambitions. Isn’t participation in the Venice Biennale a pure project of ambition, beginning from the national level and ending with the personal?
I can honestly put my hand to my heart and say that I neither grappled nor fought to get there. Daiga thought that this project could work, it was well received in the Ministry of Culture’s competition—this is also the task of the curator/commissar. But now on one day I’ll think, Why is this necessary? And then the next I’ll think that sometimes it’s good to torture yourself a bit. Another scale, and the event is nevertheless really high quality… Ambitions appear as a huge anxiety that it could turn out badly. On the other hand, while drinking a glass of wine everything looks great! You know, with objectivity it is how it is, for all of us. Right now I can’t even use the word “ambitions,” because there is nothing yet.
You aren’t oppressed by the weight of responsibility?
I don’t think so, but the majority of those involved understand that this is a desperate move. At the last minute, with barely any money. Really, painting is the only medium that could be carried out in a quality way. Perhaps a photo event, too… If the project were a complex installation, it wouldn’t go through.
Do you take into account practical limitations? In terms of intentions, shouldn’t an artist be as free as a bird up in the air?
I changed the arrangement, because there was a fire exit in the middle of one wall which couldn’t be covered. Three large pictures were intended to be there, but now the rhythm will be different. I had to find a spatial compromise. You can’t radically resolve these things in one or two months.
I understand that now you can’t afford to spend as much as you would like, but I can’t even answer whether or not this is necessary. Still, small paintings are something different from big ones. It’s a question of modes of expression—you can’t really be thrilled by a one-square-meter painting that doesn’t have any obvious narrative, especially if it is located in a twenty-square-meter room. Then the focus for everything will be on something else. So this painting must be enlarged, in order purely to play out the painterly aspect of the colors.
In my case, the most complicated part is that this will be the first time when I won’t try to comment on anything. This work of art won’t try to have some sort of social position. Though an artistic position will certainly be marked, contrary to our accustomed practice. The work won’t be installing; perhaps it will flirt with the polar opposite of what I usually do. I can’t foresee how it will communicate with other work—in this sense the ministry commission’s choice is pretty courageous. Let’s look at art magazines—what are the tendencies? There is confusion. There are similar examples to what I do; there are various idea-based, interactive searches, marketing art. But the question of “the chicken or the egg” returns: color or narrative? A comparison takes shape in our painting too. The Latvian school of painting, and the way that the young paint, are very different. They don’t do it for the sake painting, like Iltners or Boriss Bērziņš did. First they plan in their heads why they have to paint at all. We have an awful lot of young painters, but I’m thinking of the very best—Jānis Avotiņš, Anda Lāce, Kaspars Brambergs. They approach painting from completely different positions. If I have to identify myself as a creator of paintings, then I approach it from the position that at the basis of my idea is a practical task—what I want to draw to the forefront in the artwork—not that I want to paint. What determines that a work of art become a painting? All the parameters at the foundation of painting are there: color, form, and spatiality. But I don’t have anything else! If I had to paint a busy bee pulling fish from the Daugava River, that would be something else entirely. But that, I think, no longer needs to be painted today. Perhaps it’s enough to take a picture with your iPhone—that’s the difference.
Do you already consider conceptual art an old-fashioned mainstream?
I won’t have any concept. What I’ve painted will be written down.
In relation to what did you call this a “courageous decision?”
Nothing “Latvian” will be obviously present. It concerns something else. Obviously, in order to represent Latvian art, it’s enough to have an artist who speaks Latvian. Because the overall marketing title of the exhibit is “illuminations.” There isn’t talk of problems, there is talk of a category of art as such. What is art—journalism, documentation? Where is the basis, the stump, from which everything branches out? Those very same fundamental things taught in the first year at the academy. Of course, I’m brutalizing things.
Have you seen the previous Latvian exhibitions in Venice?
No. I visited the biennale many years ago, before Latvian participated. That was a long time ago, when Beuys was still popular.
I remember the year when Latvia was represented at Venice for the first time, by Ojārs Pētersons, and I carelessly asked you, “Are you planning on going?” You just snorted.
But what does the question mean “Are you going?” Back then I was a person without any money. The only time I went, I had to borrow the money. After that I worked it off for ten years in advertising.
Don’t you have the sense of a mission?
I already said in an interview that I don’t have the slightest illusions; my only hope is that I can still work for half a year on a thing that is dear to me.
Does it seem to you that, sometime in the past, you could have already represented Latvian art in this forum?
Before I would complain about this, but now I’m ashamed of it. I was much more ambitious. I don’t know what has happened, but for the last five years I haven’t cared at all. It seems to me that one must also have some sort of self-criticism; I don’t think that there really is a chance to surprise the world. I’m no longer at that age. Yet I must take into account what has happened during this entire period alongside my professional life. And it’s just crazy what has happened. It’s not possible to compete with this, at least if you’re not a mega genius. You must be a creative animal in order to digest this reality and transform it into an artistic career. What’s positive is that it’s clear to me how I could work for the next five or six years. It’s never been like that for me before. I’ve lost that Indian naiveté that you have in youth—when you are shown a mirror and are ready to give up everything if only you, too, could be reflected in that mirror. Charming, illusory moves no longer upset me.
For example, when noticing a good item in a store, I have learned to go out on the street and think over whether or not I really need it. The same holds true in my creative work: you must know how to relax and hold back on wanting things. But at the same time, a certain direction has crystallized. If a beginner in art is like a completely drunk driver, then the older you get, the straighter you start to drive. In the beginning I wanted to look at everything and try everything out; but now I want to finish things, not just tick them off.
Then what will you do for the next five years?
I’ll resolve the theme. Taking into account that a high-quality work of art costs money, this must be pulled out from somewhere. I don’t know how to do what is accepted today: to write down an idea on paper, figure out a precise budget, and then hold strictly to it. The budget already becomes a part of the work of art. My budgets always grow twice as big, because during the work process my thoughts and opinions always change, more colors must be purchased, or a board or piece of plastic. You can’t calculate a work of art in a notebook—that’s completely absurd! That’s why I don’t work in the graphic arts—I can’t draw a drawing and then transfer it onto a copper plate and scratch it out again. That’s idiotic! That’s why I think that what contemporary art forms work on is this: they concentrate on the idea, without this aspect. Marketing art concentrates on having a witty idea and a foreseeable reaction that can be calculated beforehand. But the artistic fact has actually taken place at a desk and on a piece of A4 paper, which to me seems completely wrong. I don’t know… How to explain why I act old-fashioned and increasingly more old-fashioned? Of course, if you look at the artists who will participate in the exhibit at the Arsenal in Venice, you’ve got to smile. People in their forties and fifties. Very few who are younger!
How will your career take shape in the next five years? Do you see yourself in the Arsenal?
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t care at all what will happen to me, but it’s clear to me what will be created in my studio. My resolve has been marked over the last two years in my own handwriting. I mean, purely medial handwriting. For a long time I’ve had a plan for an exhibit, but it radically differs from previous ones. My thoughts are concerned with moving toward silence, complete silence.
The goal is a work of art that is saturated with something, a filling, which is absolutely not loud. It’s not readable, it can only be gradually received.
