Andris Breže

Andris Breže is a member of the so-called “boundary breaker” generation, who brought bold new forms of expression to the Latvian art scene in the 1980s. His works conceptually poeticise reality, uniting the material ultimateness of objects with infinite interpretation and absolute artistic freedom through associative play. The imagery of Breže’s works seemingly arises from poetry, beautiful and paradoxical combinations of words, encoded narrative, while acute visual realisation affords them vivid and laconic form. In creating his works, Breže makes energetic use of the expressive potential of installations, kinetic art and found objects, granting equal significance to the specific environment in which the artist “grows” his art. 

In the installation “Masters of the Land II’, which was displayed in 1988 at the legendary West Berlin exhibition “Riga – the Latvian Avant-Garde”, Breže used paper-mache technique to create hypertrophied, muscular men working with various tools. Despite their futuristic appearance, the characters are an ironic reference to generic socialist realist works dedicated to workers and peasants. In the kinetic object “Fifteen Sisters or Farewell to the Empire” the artist also poetically appraises a common metaphor for the 15 republics of the USSR. In spite of these political associations, Breže avoids vulgar criticism in his works, turning instead to universal human pathos.

Fifteen Sisters or Farewell to the Empire. 2001.

Masters of the Land II. 1988 (2016).