Catching the Wave: Exploring the 4th Latvia Ceramics Biennale

Kaspars Geiduks: Elements

ELEMENTS is a memorial tribute show to the late Latvian ceramicist Kaspars Geiduks (1988–2021). Originally prepared a few years back in cooperation with the artist, it was opened at the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre in late autumn of 2020 but stayed available only for a couple of weeks before the stranglehold of pandemic dictated restrictions closed it for the public. Despite this unfortunate setback, the exhibition and its author seemed to have a bright and promising future. Sadly, in late 2021, Geiduks tragically passed away, leaving behind in his artworks the most precious testaments of his all too brief creative journey.

As Geiduks observed the dynamic and sometimes chaotic world of his day, he turned to art to try and define what he called his anchor points for existence – ‘elements’ balancing between dialectical and metaphysical concerns. At the same time, these elements can be interpreted as reference points for re-examining the artist’s entire creative progress. The set of ‘elements’ featured in the exhibition covers socially relevant and worldly topics as well as questions about the body, its structural setup and self-awareness, along with instinctively shaped objects through which the artist contemplated the diversity of natural forms, creating his individual interpretation of the microcosm, space and its structure.

Thus, Geiduks’s ‘elements’ can defined as flashes of thought encapsulated in an object, a sculpture or other art form. At the same time, they offer a broader umbrella concept for the artist’s professional growth in the ceramic medium, which inevitably involves some very specific technical and chemical processes.

Kaspars Geiduks was born on 12 October 1988. His professional qualifications included a bachelor’s degree in arts and interior design from the University of Latvia (2013) and a master’s degree in visual arts from the Art Academy of Latvia (2016).

Geiduks’s exhibition record began in 2011 and extended to several solo shows and numerous group exhibitions in Latvia (Cēsis, Liepāja, Rīga and Daugavpils), Czechia (Brno), Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg), Turkey (Izmir, Sakarya), Belarus (Vitebsk) and beyond. The artist represented his country at multiple international artist symposiums in Latvia (Daugavpils and Ventspils), Belarus (Bobruysk), Russia (Gavrilov-Yam), Czechia (Brno) and Estonia (Kohila). His work is held in museums and private collections in Latvia, Belarus, Russia and Switzerland.

In addition to exhibitions and symposiums, Geiduks’s creative record included multiple national and international competitions, such as the International Ceramics Festival in Mino, Japan (2017) and the Biennale for European Contemporary Glass and Ceramics in Bornholm, Denmark (2018). In 2018, he won Bronze in the National Category at the Martinsons Award International Juried Exhibition of the Latvia Ceramics Biennale. Also in 2018, the artist received a solo exhibition award as one of the top-rated participants in the sweeping Latvian centenary project “100 in Latvian Art” at the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre.

In 2015, Geiduks began making his private little world on Plepi farm in Bebri Parish, Koknese Municipality. Helped by his family, he cleaned up the area, renovated the living quarters and built himself a fully functional ceramic atelier with several kilns. For the next few years, his friends and associates from the domestic and international ceramic communities flocked there to make ceramics and fire them in the kilns. Geiduks’s life came to a premature end on 2 December 2021.