Peter Viksna’s solo exhibition This Feels Familiar / Day
In this new cycle of work, Viksna explores two parallel narratives – urban and bodily – by analyzing their intersections, contrasts and joint structures. The exhibition takes place in Riga Photography Biennial – Next 2025 Within the framework of this year’s theme « invisible but present ». Viksna’s work is closely linked to this concept, offering reflections on the strangely familiar sense of recognition – the moment the stranger becomes personal, even intimate.
A month and a half galleries Sprout The rooms will be filled with photography works with different materiality, as well as a unique installation dedicated to urban. This installation reveals the urban environment as an inclusive space for people and as an anthropological object. Peter Viksna encourages us to think about how trajectories created by human movement can change their importance when they are fragmented in photography – the meaning of the assigned to them when the camera illuminates unexpected details. Continuing this conceptual approach, Viksna has also created a series of new works that focuses on the subject of human bodies. The diversity of nudity, Peter Viksna’s portrait, giving up the traditional act of Androcentrism – perceiving the body as an actor, he reflects on the limits of convenience and inconvenience, the various voices (belief systems) existing in society and agrees in a visual game with each of his tapped pattern.
Writer and curator Charlotte Cotona (Charlotte Cotton) Has written that one of the most dramatic techniques of still life in photography is when photographers explore, as we see (or, on the contrary, we do not see) things around us. This is how our attention is paid to the perception of our things. Peter Viksna also calls the viewer to think – he is an intellectual photographer who creates the cities of the world and the notes of people deliberately, just like mapping the states of consciousness. At the same time, there is a strong irony in his works and to focus on paradoxes, which are often caused by historical, political and social circumstances.
Peter Viksna (1994, LV / NL) is one of the most active Latvian photographers of the new generation. His passion is the collective environment and the Urban landscape, where it is possible to see various contrasts and absurdities. Viksna is a photographer who tries to interfere in the city environment. At the same time, he actively document his generation in various informal situations, where the control of his main composition is exactly.
Has participated in several group exhibitions, and works have been published in international editions. 2021 in the year held a solo exhibition The Skin (Freedom, Riga). In the year 2024 participated in an ether project Nail salon (Magazin, Vienna). In the year 2023, the Riga IFF premiered at Viksna’s filmed A dog’s gaze (dir. Ieva Aleksejeva). Along with the photograph, it actively focuses on filming and directing. Received in 2021 The gold microphone About the Best Music Video of the Year. 2020 Viksna participated in the exhibition Idle (Riga Photo Month) and was published in FC Latvian Photography Yearbook.
Currently living in Amsterdam in collaboration with international artists and institutions such as Das Theater, Frascati Theater, Arno Schuitemaker, IRA Brand and others.
Riga Photography Biennale (RFB) is an international contemporary art event that focuses on analysis of visual culture and artistic representation. Photography in the title of the Biennale is used as a unifying concept for a wide variety of artistic practices that continue to transform the language of contemporary art in the 21st century. Every second year there is the Riga Photography Biennial – the Next Program. Introducing new, prospective authors, the Next program provides visibility and platform so that young artists and curators can apply for themselves in a broader context. Riga Photography Biennials – Next 2025 The program runs from April 24 to July 6, with a wide range of exhibitions and education programs, giving the new artists and curators of the Baltic and other countries, who have focused on the « invisible but present » aspects of the theme.
More information: www.rpbiennial.com
