Exhibition of drawings by the European group of artists Akroma

  • 2017-12-15
  • Natalie Suyunshalieva/TBT Staff

Exhibition of drawings by the European group of artists Akroma will be on view in the Creative Studio of the ARSENĀLS Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga (Torņa iela 1, 2nd floor) from 9 February to 11 March 2018.

Akroma is an artist’s collective composed of approximately fifty European members working in a wide variety of media – painters, sculptors, video and installation artists, printmakers, graphic artists, performers, sound-makers. “What has brought us together is our connection to DRAWING – in all its forms and expressions, drawing as a finished work or as a part of a process, as language or texture,” say Akroma participants.

Artists often start projects by drawing. It is a way of fixing an idea, kick-starting the creative thinking and the personal research. For some authors, drawing is investigatory, a first thought, a stage in their process, something rarely shown, for others it represents their primary and sole mode of practice.

The aim of Akroma is to promote the practice of drawing and the exploration taking place in Europe, and to think collectively about its realisation and exhibition where different drawings are put together, face to face, side by side in a concentrated space.

The exhibition at the Drawing Museum of Laholm in Sweden in 2015 included a group of American artists. For the collective set up in January 2016, Curator of Akroma, the Swedish-French artist Madlen Herrström has decided to concentrate on projects with the European artists only. The Latvian artist Barbara Gaile is co-curating with her for the show in the Creative Studio of the ARSENĀLS. Some Latvian artists are invited to participate in the project as well.

The Riga exhibition draws together and makes closer connections between artists who have experience of different cultures, languages and contexts and who are divided by location. Akroma wants to create and foster links between European artists and also between artists with diverse practices. Akroma is dedicated to creating exhibitions that are flexible, time and cost efficient. As a collective it functions as a non-hierarchic, fluid group of practitioners. “Thus, having mobility with our works, and the aim of using our energies, ideas, and connections together, we allow to explore the immense variety of contemporary drawing practice currently taking place in Europe,” explains Madlen Herrström.