Kaspars Groševs – Café de Paris

For ‘Café de Paris’, Kaspars Groševs illustrates the seductive getaways from the triviality of daily life by playing with familiar compositions in a subversive manner as well as highlighting the differentiation between exterior and interior. On the walls of the cafe created in the cube at TUR_telpa is a style of painting that must be understood as a rejection of traditional, conventional painting doctrines and a refusal of the expectations for stereotypical aesthetics in painting. These ironic subversions reflect painted experiences from bars Groševs frequented during his recent artist residency in Paris, images that cannot be captured through photography and are situated in memory at the time of painting. The transformation of TUR_telpa to one of those places between romance, excess and solitude, can be understood as exemplary for Groševs practice. The bar as a self contained space of safety, escape and inspiration.

About the artist

With his figurative painting style Kaspars is a well known figure in the Riga scene capturing not only the post-soviet doomy gloom of Riga, the grungy scenes of his own youth but also his own distinct aesthetics. Despite and even due to the subversive nature of his practice, Groševs is an acknowledged guest lecturer at the Art Academy of Latvia and his ‘Blue Lagoon House’ – a collaboration with Evita Vasiļjeva for the Cēsis Art Festival – was a finalist for the Purvītis Prize 2023. His background in experimental electronic music can be enjoyed as a performative moment on its own or as a complement to his visual expression through somber, resonating soundscapes. As the founder and curator of 427 Gallery he exemplifies what it means to live for and through artistic expression despite the reoccurring struggles this implies. 

About TUR_telpa

TUR_telpa’s ambition is to complement Riga’s contemporary art scene by working closely with their selected artists to create high quality, curated art exhibitions. Collaborating with the distinctive characteristic of the space – which refers to both the traditional white cube and the building’s industrial past – artists are invited to create new work and encouraged to experiment beyond what might be their conventional practice.