Linda Vilka's solo exhibition "Closed. Concert in progress". The exhibition will be open to the public from 15 November to 29 December.
Shifts in scheduling, unplanned material costs, typographical errors in texts, opening day stress and many other factors are familiar companions in the arsenal of exhibition-makers' experiences. In the exhibition "Closed. A Concert in Progress" is a collection of "deliberate mistakes" by artist Linda Vilka. Her observations, contained in visual compositions of various sizes, cover a range of blunders experienced in the process of setting up exhibitions. It is an invitation to accept our own imperfections and to see in them our inner drive.
As the artist herself says: "Usually we artists deal with worldly problems, but this time I wanted to focus on the artists themselves and their process of creation."
Mistakes permeate not only creative work, but also the everyday life of every sector: governments are wrong in their decisions, companies fail to deliver on their promises, people experience crises. It is precisely because of these imperfections - mistakes, exceptions and unfulfilled promises - that the mechanisms of society are able to exist, that they force us to react, to solve and to adapt. Which mistakes do we forgive with a light heart, and which do we pay for heavily?
"This is the age-old question of when the job is done. What is an exhibition? What is not an exhibition? An exhibition is an extremely democratic format for making and showing art," says exhibition curator Tīna Pētersone. "Put some paintings in your kitchen cupboard, invite your three upstairs neighbours over and discuss what you've seen with them."
Linda Vilka (1995) is a multidisciplinary artist, Doctor of Art and guest lecturer at the Department of Environmental Art at the Art Academy of Latvia. She has been studying at ArtEZ University in Enschede and Vilnius Academy of Arts. She often works with emotionally saturated themes and memory fixation, paying special attention to rural areas and the stories found there. Her work has been exhibited in installations, paintings, videos and performative actions in public spaces. Linda often uses the textual form, capturing the impressions of her surroundings in abstract and sometimes absurd statements.
Linda Vilka says about the exhibition: "In my practice, I almost always work with a heavy emotion. In this exhibition, I have chosen to place emotion in the depths of the space and to foreground reflection on exhibition, showing and pretending."
