Ivars Gravlejs

Ivars Gravlejs works mainly with the medium of photography, which he uses both to capture different content as well as to explore and advance the possibility of its emergence and utilisation within the framework of conceptual strategies. He continues to draw on and develop the principles he applied in his early works created during his childhood and adolescence in Riga, Latvia. A characteristic feature of Gravlejs’s work across diverse artistic cycles is a high degree of authenticity, spontaneity and free action, as well as mystification and manipulation of the viewer. However, one should also not overlook what is an almost scientific approach manifest in his ongoing study of certain phenomena.

Since 2009, as part of the project Early Works (e.g. at the Jelení Gallery), he has been working with an archive that was created in the 1990s at the start of his career in which the experimental approaches are applied that one might expect from a creative teenager. He creates photograms and photomontages accompanied by a somewhat laconic authorial commentary. For his content he often draws on events experienced in the school classroom, a repressive environment that disgusted him, as well as on adolescent games and the necessary interaction with his classmates (e.g. the cycle Fight). A post-socialist context is clear in certain works. In the cycle Concept “2” or in short 8mm films, for example, he works with what was a valuable commodity in the world of the adolescence, namely cartons of “Western” cigarettes or cans of carbonated drinks. Even in these early works there is satire, irony, provocation, even vulgarity and aggression, as well as the appropriation of already completed, commercial images (e.g. Erotic Playing Cards), which Gravlejs to a certain extent draws on in his later work too.

Gravlejs addressed the very medium of photography, the process of its creation and appropriation within the context of authorship in several projects. In 2005 he created the performative event Excuse me, could you please take a picture of me? The outcome was a series of photographic portraits of the artist taken by random passersby and a video that the artist had secretly filmed during the event. After graduating from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) he collaborated with Avděj Ter-Oganjan on The Medium is the Message 2008, in which he depicts the best cameras to be found on the market. Though the project was based on extensive research, the artists also subversively smuggled modified models into the series. For instance, the LEICA M10 only arrived on the market in 2017. The actual pictures of the cameras (leaving aside the manipulated images) were not subject to copyright, but taken from websites and given a detailed list of technical specifications. The method of cataloguing and representing the objects applied, for instance, by Bernd and Hilla Becher, is thus taken to its extreme point.

Gravlejs also opts for appropriation and work with existing records from amateur users in the series entitled Latvian Girls and Boys (2006), in which he followed and critiqued the visual illiteracy of Latvian social media users, paradoxically by not interfering in the images at all. Unlike other of his projects, here the users uploaded the visual information to the virtual domain voluntarily. In the later cycles Photographer without Camera (2011) and Message To No One (2011), in which Gravlejs also reflects upon the themes of amateurism and freedom from thinking about the process of photography, the artefacts themselves were preceded by purely conceptual considerations and connections with the art of the happening. The artist inserted SD cards or other memory devices into the cameras on display in several electronics shops. He then collected these cards and used the material contained on them without further modification. In these cycles Gravlejs is of course not interested in the technical or aesthetic aspect of the image. For the most part he is interested simply in capturing a random slice of reality that depends on the abilities and vision of the anonymous customer.

The question of the subversive role of art as transferred into a mass-media environment is examined in the cycle My Newspapers (2008–2009). For a year Gravlejs worked as a photo-reporter with the newspaper Deník, where he manipulated the photos before delivering them to the editor. My Newspapers thus draws attention to the manipulated techniques of the media itself through almost imperceptible interventions. He followed up this project with the creation of the “fake catalogue” Nelson Goodman – L’art en théorie et en action (2010), which included photographs from the cycle referred to above.

Gravlejs often uses food, consumer goods and excrement as visual materials. For instance, in Shopping Poetry (2012–2019) he selects several items on the basis of their visual form or title, which he then places in a certain sequence on the conveyor belt. He took photos of the goods bought. At the same time, depending on the marking of individual artefacts, a rhythmic “poem” is created on the receipt. The photographs and receipts are then adjusted together in their final form. There is a clear interest in the uniqueness of the moment. The objects that Gravlejs depicts are products of a given time, place and society.

Another theme that Gravlejs has long been interested in is clowning. He works with the characters Pat and Mat. The artist realised his intention of working with the conversion of photographic sequences from animated short films featuring this pair into real objects at the exhibition Angry Birds at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2012), in the Kim? Contemporary Art Centre v Rize (2012), and most recently at the Blansko City Gallery (2019). He also used the characters of these two non-artists in a performance in which they engage in a conversation in animators’ masks with an invited colleague on the “difficult life of the artist”. He was also inspired by the theme of DIY in an absurd form. As part of Malostranské dvorky (Lesser Quarter Courtyards) (2018) he covered the interior of the café with artificial turf, so that via the resulting installation he interpreted the aesthetic of the deformation and transformation of objects as we can see in the case of Pat and Mat. However, as the artist himself says, Pat and Mat are not typical clowns in the spirit of the classical circus figures of Whiteface and August – both have a destructive and supportive character in crazy ideas, which is somewhat reminiscent of Gravlejs’s own work. Pat and Mat are a symbol of DIY that finds its precursor in the everyday life of real socialism. DIY aesthetics becomes synonymous with amateurism, and Gravlejs masters this with great confidence.

In addition to larger cycles, Gravlejs’s oeuvre also features small and one-off projects. It is worth mentioning, for instance, his event in the public space entitled From CUNT to CUNT (2010), in which, along with Petra Pětiletá, he manipulated a giant, three-dimensional sign with RIGA written on it standing next to a motorway so that it now read PĪČA [píča means cunt in Czech]. This intervention was part of a project aiming to the chart the socio-economic context of the Latvian capital.

Gravlejs also works with new media, parodying it or the visual image in general. Examples would include the video La-La (2007) created in the application iMovies or the utopian project Pic to Mars (2017), which is an authorial application that evaluates with complete irreverence to what an extent a photograph is a work of art.

Ivars Gravlejs’s work is based on avant-garde and conceptual principles. Beneath the vulgar and ridiculous carapace is concealed a deep criticism of certain social phenomena and art itself. This brief introduction has only looked at the artist’s main work. A more comprehensive selection of his oeuvre can be found on his website, which could be called an artwork in itself.

Kurátorská činnost: 2018     
Dvēseles un Nedarbi, M.Martinsons&I.Nikkinena, knihkupectví Bolderaja, Riga 2016     
Still life / Fotoklub Riga, Galerie Svit, Praha
Strašně zajímavá výstava abstrakcionistů, park Stromovka, Praha 2015     
Barevná fotografie / L.Jasanský&M.Polák, Palác kultury VEF, Riga 2013     
Muzeum ruského futuristy / Avděj Ter-Oganjan, Tranzitdisplay, Praha
Fotogram, Bar Chomsky, Riga 2010     
Co je české umění? (společně s Petrou Pětiletou), Palác kultury Ilguciems, Riga

2019     
noviny AKCE, Galerie města Blanska 2018     
Nežinoma Latvijos fotografija, vydání v litevském jazyce, Galerie Kaunas 2016     
Neznámá lotyšská fotografie, self-published 2016     
Useful advice for photographers, DNCHT, ISBN: 9783946099154 2015     
Early Works, MACK, ISBN: 9781910164396

Temps de Vacances Nº2, LES CHOSES
https://naranjoetxeberria.com/temps-de-vacances-choses/ PATAPHYSICS - MIRAGE ISSUE, Austrálie
collectedphotographs.blogspot.com/2016/05/pataphysics-magazine-mirage-issue.html YET #9, Švýcarsko
https://www.yet-magazine.com/post/editors-picks-2015 CRACK #61, UK
http://crackmagazine.net/article/art/ivars-gravlejs-photography-offers-mischief-lifeline/ ELSE #10, Švýcarsko
http://www.elysee.ch/en/bookshop-and-editions/else-magazine/previous-issues/else-10/ THE GUARDIAN, UK
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/04/photography-ivars-gravlejs-man-ray-warhol-early-works  ASX, USA
http://www.americansuburbx.com/2015/11/ivars-gravlejs-early-works-a-sustainable-auto-infanticide.html Katalog výstavy Performing for the Camera
https://shop.tate.org.uk/performing-for-the-camera/17239.html Umělec #1/2013  Dienacht #11/2012, Německo
http://dienacht-magazine.com/2012/04/01/dienacht-11-jetzt-erschienen Umělec #1/2011 časopis "Fotograf" #17/2011
https://fotografmagazine.cz/magazine/amaterska-fotografie/profily/ivars-gravlejs/ časopis "Fotograf" #11/2008
https://fotografmagazine.cz/en/magazine/performance-en/tendencies/ivars-gravlejs-3/