Exhibition of Modris Brasliņš “Two”

2026. On January 10 Ogre History and Art Museum opened an exhibition of drawings by artist Modris Brasliņš “Two”, in which portraiture is revealed as a visual practice in the study of the border zones of human consciousness and unconsciousness. The exhibition offers more than 20 black and white drawings made with minimal means of expression — paper and pencil.
The exhibition “Two” highlights portraiture not as a fixation of external resemblance, but as a process that reveals the tension between the visible and the invisible, between the surface of consciousness and the deepest layers of the psyche. Modris Brasliņš’s series of drawings covers both models personally close to the artist and more distant ones, bringing a psychological and existential perspective to the forefront.
Braslins seems to think in images, created through the process of drawing, while most of us think in words. Unlike verbal thinking, which structures experience in linear, logical sequences, pictorial thinking maintains a connection to more archaic perceptual mechanisms, in which time and meaning are not subject to rational hierarchy. In this context, drawing becomes a medium in which time expands multidimensionally—it is both linear and measurable, and lateral, recessive, and vertical, revealing experience as a continuous, endless process.

The title of the exhibition “Two” marks the dualism that runs through the entire exhibition: consciousness and unconsciousness, viewer and image, presence and distance, external and internal. This division is not static, it exists as a dynamic tension, in which each portrait acts simultaneously as a reflection and as a mirror.

Modris Brasliņš graduated from painting workshops of A. Naumovs and K. Zariņš of the Latvian Academy of Arts. He has participated in several international drawing biennials in India, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, as well as actively involved in the processes of contemporary art in Latvia. He was an artist for the magazine “Rīgas Laiks”, received several awards, for example, recognition at the international drawing biennial in India and the Latvian Book Publishers Association competition “Golden Apple”. Modris Brasliņš lives and works in Ogre.

The creation of the exhibition was supported by an author’s scholarship from the AKKA/LAA association.

The exhibition was on display at the museum until March 29.

Exhibition Curator: Māris Grosbahs

Graphic Design: Modris Brasliņš

Exhibition Design: Modris Brasliņš, Māris Grosbahs

Communications Specialist: Laura Tuča

Technical Implementation: Guntars Andersons, Nils Miķelsons