Selection of Ivanovs paintings in Riga Gallery

The stars of world's pop culture—the topic of Ritums Ivanovs paintings. His works have gained recognition through a recent exhibition Doha, Qatar, where in January 2011 Ivanovs showed his large format paintings of tennis players, or through the fact that his painting FRAME 05 was sold at Sotheby's auction in London year 2009, or that an Ivanovs painting of fashion icon Kate Moss has been placed on cover of a German 2011 documentary made of the model. 

Ivanovs is no doubt one of the most popular internationally well known Latvian painters but when talking to journalist Aija Kaukule, he is reluctant to comment on the popularity of his works but would rather express his views on the icons of pop.

His paintings of four past years can now be seen at exhibition named SELECTION that takes place in Riga Gallery until May 31, 2011 (in Riga, Latvia). The selection of eight paintings from series Dreamers and Stars. Lights On. have been noticed at Art Moscow (Russia) 2010, Budapest Art Fair (Hungary) 2010 and were shown during the painter's last two Riga exhibitions of 2008 and 2010.

The artist himself says that "Here, I have been looking at the part of pop culture, that is time-related and tells about modern times through a certain visual prism. It is interesting to look at existing issues and to understand, how a new context evolves from ready-made paintings, a different view, as compared to one seen in past exhibitions".

Although a certain trait can be seen in all paintings—all characters depicted can be considered to be etalons of beauty—painter Ivanovs insists that he is interested in more than beauty. 

"The images are made of different components. I am interested in the beautiful as well as the ugly, the erotic and the neurotic... ". Ritums claims that "Humans are also perceived on different levels. I am rather interested in the way of how society itself makes such images, and which images does it decide to consume from a plentiful choice. I gather such images together: images, which everyone is somewhat sick of—some have loved them, others have hated them—because an Icon is formed out of these components. This is best seen in global icons, in musicians, who have an enormous audience".

The painter is still working in his original stripes' technique—one painting mastered in this style takes at least couple of weeks to make. The Ivanovs Technique allows to see his piece of art only at distance, at close-up one can only see thin lines. Ivanovs himself comments that using the technique does not mean repeating himself and "On every painting I work fresh, from scratch. The experiments do continue, they have nuances—thin, thick, big brushes, oil, acrylic, different technical solutions. The hand-writing of an artist lies not only in one concrete bright technique, it lies in everything—the choice of image, colors, solution".

In near future the works of painter Ivanovs travel with Riga Gallery to Viennafair of Austria and in June to Moscow, Russia.