2024 Finalists

Naive and idealistic world view, one that might be characteristic to a child, has been the bases for the latest series of paintings by artist Arnolds Andersons, who has returned to Latvia after being away for a decade. Game with the construct of memory and nostalgia, through the language of painting, is the approach the author uses to start a conversation about childhood, its ease and the process of coming of age. Similarly, to sekreķiki, fragments of the particular phase of life has been encapsulated into a human-size painting “Hide and Seek”, visualising the attempts to think of one’s surroundings, define the essential and form relationship with the unknown. Sekreķiki or “little secrets” has been a familiar game among the kids growing up during Soviet times as well as the 90’s. Boxes covered with a piece of glass, containing treasures– in means of material and emotional value – were buried in the backyard, revealing the secret spot only to one’s closest friend. Candy-wrap, a doll, glass marbles, drawn cards, plucked flower – anything imaginable, that a child would find significantly valuable within his universe, while it’s in the size of his block. “Hide and Seek”, painted by Andersons, is hiding metaphors for freedom and carelessness that can be experienced through a game. How different a thirty-year-old’s attitude towards life and belongings is – when just being is the most challenging state. For a child, the world is unspoiled; a child believes in angels and the eternal. The sculptures, painted in a manner of realism, frozen cinematographic frames of the urban environment, are exactly like that. The characters of Greek mythology are premature symbols, wrapped in the Madonna blue and illuminated by street lights. Idealised, embellished. Just like the childhood and it’s fragments, that becomes even harder to uncover and analyse with time. Fabricated reality executed to perfection is the signature of Arnolds Anderson’s work. The course of the creation of painting cycles follows a principle of a diary, forming collages from stream of current images and emotions, and letting the canvas become a space for the author to collect and let go. Whether they be stages of personal relationships – being together and coming apart, or emotional states – fulfilment and loneliness; the system of characters built and the surreal environments created distinguishes him from other artists of his generation.

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