Work

Born in Latvia, beneficiary of a rigorous academic art and scenografic training, Henrijs has lived in Riga, Berlin and London. A Hackney resident for the last decade, the urban biography is relevant, arguably a touchstone against which his practice might be tested and declared genuine, relevant. He cites as influences on his work Russian Icons and Italian Renaissance painting. With their inscribed circles and radiating lines like spotlights raking deserted streets or gun shots in glass panes they owe as much to our urban environment; from murder mile in Clapton to the labyrinthine, saturated psycho-geography of Shoreditch and Whitechapel.

In the arrangement of forms there are hints of postmodern architecture's eclecticism; the raids made on history to furnish our cities with a bewildering noise of disparate styles and motifs. Byzantine versus Gothic, Masonic symbols vie with Greco-Roman quotation, skyscrapers never quite shake off the slums or disappeared lives out of which they rise. The presence of histories jostle and blink, crowd and confound. There are traces of early church design. Look at the plan view of a basilica: its vertical nave and aisles, horizontal block of transept, crowning semi-circular apse and narthex base. Transcendence, however, is always checked by the material. A sensibility that can be traced as far back as scraping on cave walls; to the condemned sorcerer's lunar calendar sgraffito in the Salt Tower; to Antoni Tapies' desperate post-war representations. The mysterious and beatific is cut with the scratched, stained and macular. Painting with erasure, Henrijs will apply a surface and take a decorator's hook, Carborundum stone, electric plane to it. A 'story' is told and yet we are not allowed to forget myriad untold tales of the city.

In his essay 'A Walk for a Walk's Sake' Norman Bryson suggests a diametric opposition between drawing and painting:

[...] Paint can be worked and reworked; its density and opacity permit endless acts of revision and alteration, erasure and recommencement. The drawn line, in the West, obeys a different convention: With few exceptions, line is indelible, final, irretractable.

In Henrijs' work what Bryson posits as the completely opposed are forced together, compelled to inhabit the same surface; fluidity and stark incision are yoked. The effect is not simply the coupling of binary opposites but rather a productive tension realised and sustained. It is this fundamental dialectic that imbues the paintings with so much energy.

Text by AdrIan Burnham


	Born in Latvia, beneficiary of a rigorous academic art and scenografic training, Henrijs has lived in Riga, Berlin and London. A Hackney resident for the last decade, the urban biography is relevant, arguably a touchstone against which his practice might be tested and declared genuine, relevant. He cites as influences on his work Russian Icons and Italian Renaissance painting. With their inscribed circles and radiating lines like spotlights raking deserted streets or gun shots in glass panes they owe as much to our urban environment; from murder mile in Clapton to the labyrinthine, saturated psycho-geography of Shoreditch and Whitechapel. In the arrangement of forms there are hints of postmodern architecture's eclecticism; the raids made on history to furnish our cities with a bewildering noise of disparate styles and motifs. Byzantine versus Gothic, Masonic symbols vie with Greco-Roman quotation, skyscrapers never quite shake off the slums or disappeared lives out of which they rise. The presence of histories jostle and blink, crowd and confound. There are traces of early church design. Look at the plan view of a basilica: its vertical nave and aisles, horizontal block of transept, crowning semi-circular apse and narthex base. Transcendence, however, is always checked by the material. A sensibility that can be traced as far back as scraping on cave walls; to the condemned sorcerer's lunar calendar sgraffito in the Salt Tower; to Antoni Tapies' desperate post-war representations. The mysterious and beatific is cut with the scratched, stained and macular. Painting with erasure, Henrijs will apply a surface and take a decorator's hook, Carborundum stone, electric plane to it. A 'story' is told and yet we are not allowed to forget myriad untold tales of the city. In his essay 'A Walk for a Walk's Sake' Norman Bryson suggests a diametric opposition between drawing and painting: [...] Paint can be worked and reworked; its density and opacity permit endless acts of revision and alteration, erasure and recommencement. The drawn line, in the West, obeys a different convention: With few exceptions, line is indelible, final, irretractable. In Henrijs' work what Bryson posits as the completely opposed are forced together, compelled to inhabit the same surface; fluidity and stark incision are yoked. The effect is not simply the coupling of binary opposites but rather a productive tension realised and sustained. It is this fundamental dialectic that imbues the paintings with so much energy. Text by AdrIan Burnham

	Education MA Scenography, Central Saint Martins, 2001 Professional degree in Scenography, Art Academy of Latvia, 1998 BA Scenography, Art Academy of Latvia, 1996 Selected Solo Exhibitions 2009 "The Third Degree" Sesame Art Gallery, London, UK 2007 "Icon Resistance", Sesame Art Gallery, London, UK 2005 Istaba Gallery, Riga, Latvia 1998 Pfefferbank Gallery, Berlin, Germany Selected Group Exhibitions 2010 DIE Gallery, Seoul , South Korea 2009 PLUS, Volume Projects, Southwark, London "Innerer Klang", curated by Irene Bradbury, Rod Barton, London "East End Accademy", Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK "Salon", Whitecross gallery, London, UK 2008 "Summer exhibition", Royal Academy, London, UK "Group", lois Lambert Gallery, LA, US "Salon", Whitecross gallery, London, UK 2007 "Building a Legacy: Paintings 1985-2007", Bemis Center For Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Ne, US 2006 Visual AIDS, Postcards From the Edge, New York, US "Regroup" Sesame Art Gallery, London, UK "Summer show", Edgarmodern Gallery, Bath, UK 2005 "Sense & Sensuality", BlindArt, RCA, London, UK 2003 "Religion, Art & War", Salon des Arts, London, UK "Painting on wood", Bastejs Gallery, Riga, Latvia 2002 "The Discerning Eye", The Mall Galleries, London, UK 1999 East Art Gallery, Berlin, Germany International Scenic Design Exhibition "Prague Quadrennial 99", Prague, Czech Republic 1998 Pfefferbank Gallery, Berlin, Germany State Academy of Art exhibition of artists from Latvia, Brussels, Belgium Galerie-Werkstatt , Berlin, Germany "Scenobox - 2000", the exhibition of Latvian and Finnish scenographers, Riga, Latvia 1995 International Scenic Design Exhibition "Prague Quadrennial 95", Prague, Czech Republic. Awards Artist Residency, Bemis Center of Contemporary Arts, USA, 2004 "Prague Quadrennial 99", 1999