Vineta Kaulaca

Lives and works in Riga, Latvia

Artist statement

In perceiving we rely on the role of time and distance in this process of seeing without even being aware of this. Kaulača’s findings apply to the both - time and space as the dimensions that are invisible themselves but can be determined by the movement, changes and distance. Kaulača paints spatial structures and achieves sharpened perception by freeing them of what is unnecessary. She stops time or, to the contrary, overtakes it, carrying away the gaze in the eternity of perspective. Would it be possible to remember an event from our lives, while forgetting where it took place? Perhaps memory and subjective perception has transformed the experience of space in an entirely new form. Perhaps proportions, details have changed places or have acquired a totally different order. British art theorist and writer Sally O’Reilly writes: “This shuttling of pictorial language between the singular and the universal is an ancient mnemonic device. The art of memory was a practice developed by classical Greek orators and recounted by Cicero in his Do oratore as a tool for aiding memory… In her paintings Kaulača too has turned towards the object-image, rather than the worldly scene, elevating a mirror or a lamp to symbolic status.” The spatial installation of miniature paintings takes advantage of the modest format of the works and makes a reference to the cult of memory which gathers and preserves the gaze absorbed in photographs. The interplay of painting, photography and installation...

Artwork