Solo exhibition by Janis Mitrevics, one of the first brilliant postmodernists in Latvian contemporary painting.

Janis Mitrevics is one of the first brilliant postmodernists in Latvian contemporary painting. Member of the Latvian artist group “Gentle Fluctuations”. Since the 1980s, he has been known for his individual neo-expressionist style painting, which can be compared to the mass arrangements of brutalist architecture, the form of expressive volumes and the rough surface texture – ambitious and free painting, playful brutality in strokes, castings and drips of paint. A conceptual approach to painting and creating monumental environmental objects, combined with a touch of witty irony. Janis Mitrevics plays and manipulates with a story and techniques – drawing, photography, computer graphics, silk print and monumental oil painting. In his latest solo exhibition, “Re-evolution”, Janis Mitrevics offers the viewer his paintings, including social criticism, cultural revision, and his own transformation. We see a revival of Janis Mitrevics’ monumental, expressively colourful, and sometimes surreal figuralism, in which the main character is primarily a man – precisely a “rebellion of men”. One of Janis Mitrevics’ central works in this exhibition is titled “Young Man”. The new-born’s head is adorned with a glow that evokes a sacred aura and a surprising pop-art touch reminiscent of comic aesthetics. How to understand? References and paraphrases, spontaneous flow of impressions and ironic comments create a well-known Janis Mitrevics’ “disorder”, where the viewer is always given a lot of trust to make judgments in thematic and formal terms.