11-09-2018

Rothko Centre will celebrate Mark Rothko’s 115th anniversary

On Friday 21 September at Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre, the 115th anniversary of the world-renowned Daugavpils-born artist Mark Rothko will be celebrated with a concert of an Italian duet, a creative workshop for children, a press conference and the opening of eight new exhibitions.

Anniversary celebrations at Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre will begin at 1 p.m. with a new concept performance called “Redshift” from Italian musicians “Passepartout Duo” – a 40-minute long recital created expressly for the Rothko Centre. The concert takes inspiration from Rothko’s later works and the aesthetics of a unique time in the middle of the twentieth century. Bound by an improvisation on Terry Riley’s piece “Dorian Reeds”, it creates a soundscape that dissolves in colour and is reminiscent of Rothko’s red colour field paintings.

At 2 p.m., the concert will be followed by a meeting with the artists or curators of the eight new exhibitions. They will introduce the ideas, concepts and messages of the new projects, highlighting the key points of the autumn exhibition season at Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre.

The new exhibition season will feature the launch of a commemorative exhibition to an artist from Daugavpils – Silva Veronika Linarte, which will be displayed next to the room with Mark Rothko’s originals. Whereas at 3 p.m. there will be presentation of “Life Stories of Latgale-Born Artists. Silva Linarte” publication.

In parallel with the book launch, at 3 p.m. outside, near the Rothko Centre, students of the local art school “Saules skola” will be joined by participants of the international painting symposium “Mark Rothko 2018” in a creative workshop “Painting Our Future Together”. The event will be part of the European Cooperation Day 2018.

The day will reach its climax at 4 p.m. with the grand opening of the new exhibition season.

The new autumn exhibition season, conceived as an homage to Mark Rothko on his 115th anniversary, creates a space where the past meets the present while looking onwards, into the future. A nation’s past is the common thread in the LEGACY exhibition by a group of Lithuanian artists. In her SCREEN project, artist Sandra Krastiņa contemplates time, memory, power and heroes, using her work as a platform to speak about the things she finds relevant today. Breaking the boundaries of time across two generations of artists is the central theme of the TWO CHAGALLS project, which juxtaposes the work of the world-renowned artist Marc Chagall from the collection of the Marc Chagall Museum in Vitebsk, Belarus with the work of Lithuanian artist Jonas Daniliauskas who draws heavily on Chagall in his creative pursuits. The past and its achievements as the driving force for the future is at the core of the Israeli project INDEPENDENCE IN THE ART OF THE LATVIAN-BORN SHAMIR BROTHERS.

In their joint exhibition SIMILAR CODES, twin sisters Ilona Linarte-Ruža and Dace Pudāne talk about continuity in the present through lessons from the past. The past preserved through the present and into the future shines through two commemorative exhibitions – SCENES FROM THE SOUL in memory of Silva Linarte and MAXIMALISM FOREVER! in memory of ceramic artist Maruta Raude. Meanwhile, references to Mark Rothko and his past achievements viewed through the prism of their relevance today are present in the group exhibition of the participants of the international painting symposium MARK ROTHKO 2018.

At 11 a.m. through 4 p.m. on 21 September, entrance tickets to the Rothko Centre will be available at special discount prices – all temporary exhibitions (Sectors B, C and D together) for 1.50 EUR, permanent exhibition “MARK ROTHKO. LIFE AND ART” (Sector A) for 3.00 EUR, and full ticked to the entire centre for 4.50 EUR. After the grand opening of the new exhibition season, entrance to all temporary exhibitions and the permanent exhibition will be free of charge.

The new season’s exhibitions will be on display until 4 November 2018.

Supporters: Daugavpils City Council, State Cultural Capital Foundation, the U.S. Embassy to Latvia, the Israel Embassy to Latvia, Latvia – Lithuania – Belarus Cross-Border Cooperation Programme within European Cooperation Day, Valmiermuiža Brewery, Devona.

Additional information and descriptions of the exhibitions:

https://www.rothkocenter.com/en/exhibitions

Publicity photo:

-        New exhibition season. The Exhibition “Screen”. The author Sandra Krastiņa.