Rothko Centre to launch its autumn exhibition season and announce the Martinsons Award winners
At 4 p.m. on Friday, 8 September, the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre will launch its autumn exhibition season with the awards ceremony for the Martinsons Award 2023 International Juried Exhibition.
This year, the tone of the autumn season at the Rothko Centre, the Daugavpils Fortress, the city of Daugavpils and elsewhere in the country is set by the 4th Latvia Ceramics Biennale, bringing together world-class artists and tracing the latest tendencies in contemporary ceramics worldwide.
The star event of the autumn exhibition season and the 4th Latvia Ceramics Biennale is the Martinsons Award 2023 International Juried Exhibition. This year, the award received a record 685 applications from artists representing 71 countries, including 68 submissions from Latvia – the largest number to date and a solid testament to the platform’s global outreach and eminence. The prize fund of 20,000 EUR will be split among Gold, Silver and Bronze Prize winners in National and International categories. All the artworks on display will be featured in the exhibition catalogue, and all participant artists will be welcome to all the events in the biennale programme.
The autumn season at the Rothko Centre also includes “Fear Whispering” – the new solo exhibition by the distinguished Lithuanian ceramicist Agnė Šemberaitė, Gold Prize winner of the Martinsons Award 2021 at the 3rd Latvia Ceramics Biennale. Her work represents an ongoing exploration into human nature through a bold re-imagining of fairy-tale and sci-fi themes and characters, ritual practices, mythical beliefs and archaeological totems. Another highlight in the autumn season’s offer is “Elements” – a memorial solo show of Kaspars Geiduks, Bronze Prize winner of the Martinsons Award 2018. The artist’s work covers acute social issues and questions about the body, its structural setup and self-awareness, along with instinctively shaped objects through which he contemplates the diversity of natural forms, creating his individual interpretation of the microcosm, space and its structure.
Besides ceramics, the autumn season at the Rothko Centre offers an exciting solo project in Latvian contemporary painting – “The Grounded Moment” by Uldis Čamans. In his approach to the medium, the artist draws from messy, visceral sensations and juxtaposes dynamic episodes that capture his imagination. Although it is no easy task to isolate the most distinctive features of his art, one thing stands out above all else – the finely balanced pastel lustre of the morning that softly gleams in nearly all his work.
The grand launch of the Rothko Centre’s autumn season on 8 September is only one episode in a long day of events within the 4th Latvia Ceramics Biennale. At 2 p.m. near the open-air 4METRES Gallery, 8 Hospitāļa Street, Elīna Titāne and Una Gura will open their duo exhibition “3+4”. At 3 p.m., an open-storage chamber for contemporary ceramics will be unveiled at the Daugavpils Fortress 7th Bastion Casemate. Martinsons House will host “Visualising Gravity”, a public performance by the internationally renowned Latvian artist Dainis Pundurs, two-times winner of the Martinsons Award, and open a memorial catalogue on Pēteris Martinsons.
Admission to all the events is free of charge.
The autumn exhibition season will be on show through 19 November 2023.
The autumn season at the Rothko Centre still includes the Ceramic Laboratory International Symposium Exhibition along with “Doors of Perception” by the British painter John Hoyland and Mark Rothko’s originals. On top of that, from the end of September, visitors will be able to see the Mark Rothko 2023 International Painting Symposium output.
The exhibitions are produced with REACT-EU funding towards Europe’s post-pandemic recovery.
