Ēriks Apaļais

As a painter, Ēriks Apaļais explores image and language, time and memory. Sometimes his works seem closer to linguistics and semiotics than figural art, as the artist employs signs rather than images in his works. He has devised a subjectively precise system in which one encounters opened books, letters, snowmen and other motifs floating in an airless space, which not infrequently indicates that the artist himself is journeying through the treacherous terrain of memory and the past. 

Apaļais not only deals with his own traumas, but also with his parents’ and grandparents’ life stories. The panting “Zaļais krēsls” from the series “Tukums–Tomska” addresses both family and collective history. It reflects on the deportation of Latvians to Siberia during the Soviet occupation, of which Ēriks’ grandmother was also a victim. As memories recede, the artist tries to rescue them, at the same time admitting that they are ethereal. Therefore, this series of paintings inhabits an ambiguous space between memories and the difficulty of reconstructing them, history and mythmaking, reality and imagination.

Tukums-Tomsk (The Green Chair). 2019.