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EXHIBITION: ILMĀRS BLUMBERGS “THE GLASS PEARL GAMES”

By Editor. 04.02.2010

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Ilmārs Blumbergs’ solo exhibition THE GLASS PEARL GAMES will present the artist’s paintings, assemblages and objects.

Gallery: Blumbergs

The artist does not limit himself by common artistic means but uses a wide, colourful and unordinary spectrum of materials – resin, plastic, wood, charcoal, glass, various organic materials, banal ready-made objects – beads, plastic figurines etc.
Blumbergs can be considered the most influential representative of mythological thinking in Latvian art. His theme in art is the existence of human being; the object of artistic research – life and death.  Symbols and irony are always intertwined in the artist’s works. In this exhibition it shows in the absurd texts (“Friend Searching for Beads”, “Devil Take the Content, Stress the Form, Vitja”, No Joy in Life, Read Koran”, “Freedom is Dangerous” etc.) attached to the works but one should remember they have come from life in the form of quotes, graffiti and slogans.
The title of the exhibition recalls the cultic novel “The Glass Bead Game” (1946) by Hermann Hesse, dealing with the intellectuals of the province of Castalia and their never-ending game, and Blumbergs joins the process with enthusiasm.  But in his case more important is the “game” involving the basic principles of art and existence as well as the ideas of the world’s leading musicians, poets and philosophers. The artist states: “The present lacks any unifying cultural principle focused upon a certain goal; that is why multiple “games” feature in the title of the exhibition. There is none single core to art. It is multi-polar and cannot be classified as neatly as Hesse did. The very basic rules of what is art are not really clear. In addition, there is a question whether the game and its players are needed by the society at all?”
Ilmārs Blumbergs’ solo exhibition “The Glass Bead Games” will be on view on both floors of the Riga Gallery. The show includes also the dedication to the Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute”; the artist had started working on it already in 1998 together with the prominent Russian director Yuri Ljubimov. The work on this theme has been presented in different versions, including the staging of “The Magic Flute” at the Latvian National Opera together with the director Viesturs Kairišs and multi-media exhibition at the Latvian pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennial in 2001; the work is going on till now.