Earthworks

Parallel to his large-scale site-specific installation Circulation at Plus359 Gallery, housed in Sofia’s century-old Water Tower, Latvian artist Andris Eglītis presents a significant body of works from his ongoing Earthworks series at Harta Gallery. In 2013, the artist received Latvia’s most prestigious visual arts award—the Purvītis Prize—for this very series, which he began in 2011.

The exhibition brings together both existing and newly created paintings, all produced at Savvaļa, an open-air art space founded by Eglītis and a group of collaborators in 2020 in Drusti Municipality, Northern Latvia. Each year, artists and musicians gather there for short residencies to create and build together beyond the urban environment.

Faithful to his philosophical and existential approach to painting—one that emerges from an intense observation of nature—this ongoing body of work constitutes a continuous exploration of materiality, carried out quite literally with nature’s collaboration. The canvases are covered with mud and earth, often bearing traces of having been buried in the ground or exposed to the elements in the forest. Upon closer inspection, their characteristic broad brushstrokes, earthy palette, and abstract presence reveal the artist’s conviction that this centuries-old medium can still be reimagined in ways that deepen our understanding of liminal states of being—of that potential moment in which, for example, painting has not yet become “painting.”

Eglītis also frequently experiments with the relationship between painting and reality, using painting’s inherent slowness to “document” installations or to create physical objects that—in contrast to painting’s traditional representational role—imitate the very brushstrokes found on the canvas.