Leonards Laganovskis. CLEAN CUT

The Clean Cut solo exhibition by Leonards Laganovskis comprises works from the last two years alongside art recognised as canonical in Latvian art history and exemplified by Clean Cut, a painting that came to be viewed as one of the symbols for the end of an era at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s.

As a conceptualist, Leonards Laganovskis spurns visual depiction of the reality or subjects it to a systemic reading of ideas. And yet Laganovskis’ body of work defies consolidation into a single whole; his art is too multi-layered for that, defined by profound intellectual structures encompassed by irony, and imagery in equal measure. This has prompted art critics to widen the theoretical boundaries and refer to poetic or ironic conceptualism. Certainly, Laganovskis’ way of thought has been informed by countless works by postmodern philosophers; however, the artist approaches any theory with a dose of irony, as if suspecting that it will be replaced by a new one before long.

Leonards Laganovskis (1955) graduated from Art Academy of Latvia and contributed to iconic exhibitions like Nature. Environment. Man (1984) and Riga-Lettische Avantgarde (1988), an integral part of Latvian art history. In the 1990s, Laganovskis lived in Berlin and had almost twenty solo exhibitions in Germany; he received numerous awards, also winning grants and scholarships from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture (Germany), Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Canada) and Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Germany). He has given talks and curated a number of art shows.