Country of Two (Review)
Country of Two
Zoya Frolova. Jānis Jākobsons
01.08. 31.08.2008
The Latvian National Museum of Art in collaboration with Franklin Bowles Galleries (USA) offers the exhibition Country of Two. For the first time since the mid-1990s it is an opportunity to see works of artists Zoya Frolova (b. 1953) and Jānis Jākobsons (b. 1959) who are based now
in New York. The exhibition features Zoya Frolova's recent paintings as well as installations and design jewellery by Jānis Jākobsons.The Latvian National Art Museum in Riga has organised Zoya Frolova's and Jānis Jākobsons exhibition during the year when, on November 18, the Latvian nation will commemorate the 90th anniversary of its independence. Nevertheless, the work of these two artists invites us to reflect on the concept of nation not in terms of its traditional, common meanings, but rather in a much wider sense, as an abstract symbol and image. For the origin of their "nation" just as with the history of any nation was facilitated and influenced by specific, imponderable events,
both in recent years and in the more distant past.Zoya Frolova and Jānis Jākobsons present a union of two creative personalities, who come from and belong to the Latvian nation (in the more conventional sense of the word), yet who have for several decades been living beyond its borders on another continent. The inception of their union dates to the first meeting of the two artists in 1982 in the Senezh, the Art Center of the USSR Union of Artists. This providential occasion was to become the foundation of both their life together and their creative paths as artists. At the time, Zoya's and Jānis' creative work was already marked by extraordinary
consistency and by an evident desire to realize conceptions outside of the frameworks of official social organisations and beyond territorial borders as such.In Zoya Frolova's later work the compositions created in America she achieved representation of her unrestricted flight of thought and acquired virtuosity with atmospheric, cinematographic moods. In contrast, Jānis Jākobsons' paintings in his new homeland broke free from the two-dimensional plane, often articulating novel spatial dimensions with various material textures and new
possibilities for the visual combination of these elements in the art object. Furthermore, in America Jānis unlocked a whole new medium for himself, as if he had discovered jewellery art anew, although he carried this knowledge with him from Latvia.Zoya Frolova's and Jānis Jākobsons' exhibition is their own way a "nation in a nation." It is clear that memories are completely essential in this unusual nation; whether they are dense and absolutely visible, or merely perceptible layers of feelings, they are objects, symbols and concepts that are both known and finite, yet also continuously gathering patina.
Exhibition curator Irxna Buxinska