Rīgas Galerija

HENRIHS VORKALS

TIME

09.10.2008. - 01.11.2008.

Opening of the catalogue of Heinrihs Vorkals’ art
This is the first comprehensive publication dealing with the artist’s output and illustrating his versatility and smart ideas. The catalogue consists of 200 pages, format – B4, the artist’s work is shown in 180 colour reproductions, documentary photographs, the artist’s biography and art historians’ texts interpreting his art. Texts are written by Jānis Borgs, art critic, artist and Vorkals contemporary, and Dr. art. Mark Allen Svede, curator of the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rugers University/ New York, USA, who submitted the essay “Can Latvia have its own Andy Warhol?” Catalogue is designed by Ojārs Pētersons. Catalogue text is translated into English.
Catalogue published by the RIGA GALLERY
Supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation
Catalogue will be available at the Riga Gallery and bookshops.

Heinrihs Vorkals’ solo exhibition “TIME”. Retrospection.
RIGA GALLERY
from 09.10.2008. to 01.11.2008.
1st and 2nd floor

The exhibition title “TIME” is derived from the influential USA magazine “TIME”, playing with its metaphorical and real significance that influences and reflects world processes. “Time” is the sign and logo of the exhibition. The entire exhibition can be described as “the story of the artist’s life and visual confession”, a never-ending reflection on the topical issues of life. (Heinrihs Vorkals)
“Time” is also the title of the artist’s programme work that attests to his interest in the world culture, music, social and political processes that was exposed at the international art biennial in Warsaw. The exhibition features more than 70 works significant in Vorkals’ career and not presented to the public before.
Vorkals’ creative activity is typified by conceptual approach, developing the principle of serigraphy and fragmentation by the means of drawing, pastel and watercolour.
Already since the 1960s the artist’s creative ideas and activity were shaped by powerful impulses of American popular culture received by the artist through his favourite pop-artists Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg; he had not travelled to the USA himself. Vorkals likes the irony expressed by these artists, interpreting subjects related to the USA political and social processes.
The artist has taken up also the music band Rolling Stones and their legend Mick Jagger, whose personality and image fascinates Vorkals from both human and intellectual standpoint since the early 1960s when their careers started, albeit in different fields of self-expression. The artist thinks that Mick Jagger’s and Andy Warhol’s personalities and creative work illustrate an entire epoch not only in the history of the USA but on the world scale in general. Also Vorkals continue to quote and interpret the French painting master Edouard Manet’s works, putting up himself next to other personalities from different epochs in a unified ideological conception.
Heinrihs Vorkals’ (b. 1946) creative career started in the mid-1960s. The artist has participated in significant group exhibitions in Latvia and Europe, representing Latvian art in such events of visual art life as the International Biennial of Graphic Arts in Kaliningrad (2000) and International Poster Biennial in Warsaw (2002). Vorkals’ solo exhibitions have been on view at the Riga Gallery several times – in 1993 and 1999, “Pop Art is Dead” (2001, together with Juris Putrāms and Vilnis Putrāms) and “Born in America”(2003) that was awarded the Prize of the Year 2003 in the category “Solo exhibition in a Gallery in Latvia”; the latest solo exhibition was “It’s Andy Warhol” (2005).

Heinrihs Vorkals works are found in the collections of:
Latvian National Museum of Art,
State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow,
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, New York/USA,
public and private collections in Latvia and Europe

More information about Henrih Vorkal in section ARTISTS