Inguna Gremzde's exhibition “Little Water, Little Stone - They Live Sun's Long Life” at the Eco Gallery of View explores the complex relationship between humans and nature referring to landscape as a portrait of nature. Facing the world today the landscape has become not only a portal through which to consider traditional notions of beauty and the sublime, but also a framework to examine society, identity and ecology. In Gremzde's works nature is regarded as a focus for the formation of individual and community's identity. Growing alienation from nature, habitation in cities and dominating consumer lifestyle results in more time spent in constructed, artificial paces monitored by surveillance cameras like shopping malls and waiting halls defined as non- places, which being real measure of our time have no identity, relations and history. The scene of nature paid close look at as opposite can open itself to reveal a secret life, a narrativity and history outside the given field of perception.
The exhibition balances a number of works dealing with miniature landscape paintings placed in brightly coloured bottle caps with images of lonely shoppers painted on transparent plastic lids. A small scale of images engages diverse audiences, the exhibition aims to spur dialogue and foster empathy between audiences while inspiring deeper bonds between audience members and nature.
Miniature landscape paintings placed in standardized plastic bottle caps are a small world on its own without national restrictions depicting sky, fields and woods, surrounded by contemporary frames. Even not showing any trace of human presence the scenes compare contemporary consumer lifestyles with man's historically romantic relationship with nature. These small landscapes could have been intended for looking at when seized by a vague feeling of necessity to escape from undefined urban environment. Conceptually miniature scale could be regarded as a reference to the shrinking space of unaltered nature. The work in the same time investigates the common trend of landscape being regarded as unclean and unsafe unless neatly packaged, managed, labeled and turned into commodity. Important aspect of the project was to upcycle discarded caps, attempting to reduce the amount of single-use plastic waste in the world in some way.
Inguna Gremzde is a multidisciplinary artist based in Riga/ Latvia and London/ UK. Receiving MFA from Wimbledon College of Art (London, UK) in 2011 Gremzde was selected for Axis MaStar graduate award by WW Gallery. Gremzde' paintings and mixed media installations mostly dealing with environmental and social issues since then have been shortlisted for prizes including 6th International Arte Laguna Art Prize (Arsenale; Venice, Italy), Threadneedle Prize (Mall Galleries; London, UK) and awarded Honorable Mentions at Turgut Pura Prize (İzmir Art and Sculpture Museum; Izmir, Turkey), 53rd International Show (San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA) and 30th September Competition (Alexandria Museum of Art; Alexandria, LA).
Gremzde's solo shows were presented at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (Lubbock, TX) and the 621 Gallery (Tallahassee, FL) in 2019 and Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts (NY) in 2012 and duo show with Susie Hamilton - at WW Gallery (London, UK) in 2012.
Group exhibitions in US in venues including Painting Center and Jeffrey Leder, Brenda Taylor, Crossing Art, Trestle Galleries (all in NYC); HVCCA (Peekskill, NY); Aljira (Newark, NJ); CoCA (Seattle, WA); Susquehanna Art Museum (Harrisburg, PA); Spartanburg Art Museum (Spartanburg, SC); ATHICA (Athens, GA); California Museum of Art (Thousand Oaks, CA); Berkeley Art Center (Berkeley, CA). Internationally, Gremzde has exhibited in Kunstverein Tiergarten/ Galerie Nord (Berlin, Germany); Ulster Museum (Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK); The Nunnery (London, UK); Fórum Eugénio de Almeida (Évora, Portugal); Plato Sanat (Istanbul, Turkey) and Santorini Biennale (Imerovigli Cultural Center; Santorini, Greece) among other exhibitions in UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Turkey, Israel, Japan, South Korea and Canada.
