Baltic Collectors
ZUZEUM Art Centre, Riga, Latvia
exhibition design - completed, 2022
the exhibition “Growing Out? Growing Up? Contemporary Art Collecting in the Baltics” was on view from June 4 until November 20 in 2022
client: ZUZEUM Art Centre
exhibition architecture, drawings & visuals: Toms Kampars
artistic director: Olga Temnikova
project director: Ieva Zībārte
partner advisory group: Ugnė Bužinskaitė, Agnese Kleina, Karin Laansoo, Giedrė Marčiulaitė
graphic designer: Karola Rubene
project manager: Katrīna Jurkevica
technical director: Raivis Švarcs
exhibition installation: Andris Konošonoks, Māris Mikāns
photos: Madara Kuplā, Ansis Starks, Anna Matule
The exhibition “Growing Out? Growing Up? Contemporary Art Collecting in the Baltics” at Zuzeum Art Centre brings together ten unique collections, each shaped by a distinct and selective taste. Organising them into separate clusters helps highlight their differences. At the same time, the transparency of the exhibition allows visitors to see the collections as a cohesive whole, representing the varied practices of art collecting across the Baltic states.
The exhibition hovers between contrasts: light and heavy, natural and artificial, digital and analogue. Each artwork carries an emotional “weight” and a story of its own, so the architecture seeks to minimise its presence, delicately balancing on the edge of visibility. The result is a continuous cluster of floating art, visible from both front and back, revealing the exhibition with openness and honesty.
Two distinctly different materials are brought together in the display: timber and transparent plastic. Engineered timber reflects contemporary aspirations for renewable and lower-carbon construction, while transparent plastic offers lightness, accessibility and practicality. Transparent screens, made especially familiar during the COVID-19 pandemic, coexist with glued timber products experiencing renewed use in construction. Together, they bring the exhibition’s central idea of contrast into physical form.
