On 11th August, German artist, musician and poet Augusta Laar’s exhibition The Reconstruction of Poetry will be opening at the Office Gallery. Augusta Laar has created video works and installations, written love poems, photographed city landscapes and performed within the framework of the Kunst oder Unfall Electro Acoustic Poetry Duo.
Augusta Laar, who favours the Fluxus tradition, finds inspiration absolutely everywhere – in society, on the street and in public and private spaces. She collects everyday objects and uses them in her works of art, ignoring their original functions and activities for which they were meant. A surreal installation, The Great Dolls’ Clinic, which was created after the artist found children’s dolls in an abandoned factory, will be on view at the exhibition. The forgotten and unutilized doll figures and their individual scattered details make one think about the transience of moment, and at the same time, about attachment and trust. The artist’s interest in vanitas and the presence of death can also be seen in the Reading out Poetry to the Dead Birds installation, which is composed of stuffed birds and short video fragments. Birds are usually associated with freedom, but in Augusta Laar’s work, they remind us of the inevitability of death. The 99 Love Poems installation confirms the artist’s manifold art language – it consists of ninety-nine vinyl records in which love poems, composed by Augusta Laar, have been recorded, the surfaces of which have served as a pallet for her drawings and notes. The exhibition also includes photographs which were created with a pocket analogue photo camera. The artist has used photographic film with expired terms, and taken photographs of advertisements in the city environment. Augusta Laar finds the incidental and unpredictable palette of colours useful as a means for returning poetic expression to the city landscape.
Augusta Laar was born in 1955 in Germany, and lives and works in Munich and Vienna. She studied music at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
At the exhibition, which will be opened at 6.30 pm on Thursday 11th August, Augusta Laar will be doing a performance as part of the Kunst oder Unfall Group, in which she works together with her husband, sound artist Kalle Aldis Laar, who is of Latvian descent. Various sounds are combined with poetry readings and video fragments in the Kunst oder Unfall performances. The artistic duo has appeared at many festivals, exhibitions and art events, including the Venice Art Biennale in 2011 and 2007.
The Reconstruction of Poetry Exhibition will be open for viewing until 30th September. Supported by: the Rīga City Council and the State Culture Capital Foundation.
The LCCA Office Gallery is open every working day from 12 midday until 6pm; entry to exhibitions is free. Address: Alberta Street 13 (7th floor), Rīga, LV-1010. Telephone: +371 67039282