Inese Manguse paintings, Michail Plohocki sculptures

In Gulbene Municipality History and Arts museum till July 15th, the Year 2023, are exhibited Inese Manguse paintings and Michail Plohocki sculptures.

In 2014, the United Nations officially declared mankind to be an urban species. According to the next report of UN (2018), predicted that the percentage of population residing in urban areas of Northern Europe will reach 90% by 2050. In the same report it is predicted that only half of the current Latvian rural population, or 365 thousand people, will keep living in provinces.

The fact that modern society looks towards cities, but cities only look at themselves provokes a huge mental gap between the cities and provinces. We believe art can play an important role in bridging this gap.

Tirza is an example of constant depopulation, it doesn’t even have its own post office anymore, and we represent something similar to the Red Book of endangered “rural species” in their environments.

In this exhibition we focus on the visual arts of traditional media, using archaic materials such as self-made egg tempera paints, wooden boards and bronze castings. Similar to rural population, such time-consuming ways of creating art are also “endangered”.

Inese Manguse: ““Tirza” is a series of paintings about a small and charming village in Latvia called Tirza where my family has lived for at least 8 generations. It appeared to me to be so much more lovable and beautiful after I spent many years living a fast paced and stressful life in one of the world’s biggest megalopolis. Nostalgic memories bring me back to my childhood and result in slow landscapes showing key symbols of rural living, its clearness and solid values.”

Mihails Plohockis: “In my opinion, “Tirza” is an allegory of the inner world of a person, which only one knows about. My sculptures form a symbolic and open portrait of Tirza, inspired by the first impressions and time spent there.”

Exhibition “Tirza” will be open for visitors till July 15th, Year 2023.

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