JĀNIS ŠNEIDERS
TEXTS
INTRODUCTION
Surfaces with what feels like countless small beige tiles, drawn in perfect vanishing point perspective, lead our gaze as far as the light will go. Only a narrow, dim transition leads to what follows: compact black. It almost seems like it is coming voraciously towards us, enlarging and able to swallow us up in a moment. The area in which the light wrestles with the shadow appears like a deeply calmed battle zone. Which part wins or whether this state of balance remains frozen for all time is not told in paintings like “Cave” or “Edge” by Jānis Šneiders.
With a few strokes and reduced colors, the Latvian artist designs spaces in his oil paintings that at first glance seem like abstract color fields or patterns. Only at second sight, objects and architectural situations become concrete: Whether an elon- gated basin, a corner, a pillar, a bench or a window – inevitably, tiles and absolute darkness form a contrast, the drama of which is counteracted in a strange, even absurd way by the almost unbearable calm of the scenery. In their massiveness, the paintings seem like monuments or symbols of the unconscious. Similar to a deep well or an old house where all the furniture is covered with sheets, they evoke a sense of creepiness and trepidation. While the unlit space evokes the uncertainty of what is hidden, the emptiness of the lit area allows the viewer to see how threatening the absence of everything can be. The assessment of space, the projection of experiences made and the application of what has already been learned gain in importance in the face of these manifestations of nothingness.
Jānis Šneiders' titles appear just as straightforward and simple as the pictures. But if you let them take effect for a moment, it becomes clear that even in the words – cave, window, island – a secret is hidden, our imagination is played with by making the meaning only superficially detectable. Each time, image and title evoke memories, but the associations suffocate for lack of feeding details. Never can we locate, or assign. We read and see something, but understand nothing. By confronting us with this nothingness, Janis Sneiders puts us in a state of limbo in which feelings of attraction and repulsion oscillate. He opens a door in us to the subconscious – and that is fascinating and disturbing at the same time.
Jānis Šneiders was born in 1995. After his first artistic steps at the Riga Art High School, he studied painting at the Art Academy of Latvia from 2015 and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp as part of an Erasmus residency in 2018. In 2019, he graduated with a bachelor's degree and has been continuing his studies at the Art Academy of Latvia in the field of Visual Communication since then. His works have been shown in several solo exhibitions in Latvia and Sweden. In 2017 he received a Rotary Art Society scholarship and in 2019 the NBYAA Young Painter Award. At POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair 2020, Jānis Šneiders was presented as the winner of the Claus Michaletz Award for Eastern European Art, which was awarded for the first time by the Secco Pontanova Foundation.
Text: Ines Wittneben
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