On January 10 at 15:00, the drawing exhibition “Two” by artist Modris Brasliņš opened on the second floor of the Ogre History and Art Museum. The exhibition presents portraiture as a visual practice that explores the boundaries between human consciousness and the unconscious. It features more than 20 black-and-white drawings created using minimal expressive means — paper and pencil.
The exhibition “Two” redefines portraiture not as a mere fixation of external likeness, but as a process that reveals tension between the visible and the invisible, the conscious surface and the deeper layers of the psyche. The artist’s series of drawings includes both personally intimate and more distant models, foregrounding a psychological and existential perspective.
Brasliņš appears to think in images, which he creates through drawing, whereas most people think in words. Unlike verbal thinking, which structures experience in linear and logical sequences, visual thinking remains connected to more archaic mechanisms of perception, where time and meaning are not governed by rational hierarchy. In this context, drawing becomes a medium in which time expands multidimensionally — it is at once linear and measurable, as well as lateral, recessive, and vertical, revealing experience as a continuous and infinite process.
The exhibition title “Two” highlights the dualism that permeates the entire exhibition: consciousness and unconsciousness, viewer and image, presence and distance, the external and the internal. This division is not static, but exists as a dynamic tension, where each portrait simultaneously functions as both reflection and mirror.
Modris Brasliņš graduated from the A. Naumovs and K. Zariņš painting workshop at the Latvian Academy of Arts. He has participated in several international drawing biennials in India, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, and is an active figure in Latvian contemporary art. Brasliņš has worked as an artist for the magazine “Rīgas Laiks” and has received multiple awards, including recognition at the international drawing biennial in India and in the Latvian Book Publishers Association competition “Zelta ābele”. He lives and works in Ogre.
The creation of the exhibition was supported by an author’s scholarship from the AKKA/LAA association.
The exhibition can be viewed in the museum’s Small Exhibition Hall on the second floor. Admission is free on the opening day, January 10. The exhibition will be open 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
