Kristaps Ģelzis

Kristaps Ģelzis is a veteran of Latvian contemporary art, with a career stretching back to the 1980s. In his installations, video works, large-scale watercolours and other media, he explores the peculiarities of materiality and perception, often playing with socially critical and political aspects and cliches of consumer society and pop culture. With a penetrating, critical intonation, Ģelzis addresses his time, his country and its people. 

Ģelzis’ “The Wall” is considered the first video installation in Latvian art. In the work, the artist addresses environmental and socio-political issues, using the powerful suggestive semantics of the image of the wall. Ģelzis’ video work “Mūris” is supplemented by his artistic performance in Riga’s St. Peter’s Church at “Kino dienas 86” (Cinema Days ’86).

In 2007, Ģelzis unexpectedly took up watercolour painting, creating a series of large-scale works which revealed not only his ability to change and to surprise the public without resorting to technological tricks, but also showed how the unpopular, almost forgotten watercolour technique could be an effective contemporary art medium. The large-scale watercolour “Campfire” addresses ecological issues. With typical irony, Ģelzis highlights both environmental problems and pollution in people’s minds and language. 

The Wall. 1987 1986?.

Campfire. 2008.