Bright Exhibitions at the Resort: Jurmala Art Has Grown 'My Paris' 0 7

Luxurious Ash

The first artistic address greets you right at the Dubulti railway station, where for over ten years, under the guidance of arts curator Inga Steinmane, the Art Station Dubulti gallery has been operating on two floors.

Since 2015, the station has served as an experimental platform for contemporary art in Latvia. Being both a professional cultural institution and a public space accessible to all, it demonstrates an example of how art can meaningfully interact with society – not isolating itself but integrating into the daily rhythm. The exhibition program is implemented with the support of the Jurmala City Council.

Currently, a solo exhibition by artist and sculptor Vidvuds Zviers is concluding here. The author was born in 1976 in Riga and studied painting at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit (1995–1999). Since 2003, he has held eleven solo exhibitions at the McCormick Gallery in Chicago. He returned to Latvia in 2020.

His works are held in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, the DePaul University School of Music, the Tisch Library at Tufts University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Library of Latvia.

In the first hall, visitors are greeted by two mighty ash trees, processed by the author. Each weighs a ton. This serves as a portal, an entrance to the temple of arts and further, to the second floor, where the master's paintings are displayed.

Playing with Dolls

Soon, an exhibition by one of the leading artists of his generation, Janis Mitrevics, will open here. It is called L ELLE. Open daily from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, free entry.

The central element of the exhibition is the image of a doll, created based on a mass-produced toy doll. It resembles a human.

"Hell. Doll. Doll hell. Dolls are usually played with. Games can be different, but a doll is a very grateful model," says artist Janis Mitrevics. The image of the doll will be presented both in painting, which is a typical form of self-expression for Janis Mitrevics, and in porcelain sculptures, which will be showcased at his exhibition for the first time. The entire exhibition consists of new works created specifically for the solo exhibition.

Since the 1980s, Janis Mitrevics has been part of a group of artists who, in the late 1990s, held a significant art exhibition during the Latvian Awakening – "Soft Oscillations."

Critics called it "the artist's theater," as the exhibition began in an empty hall and the works were created in front of the audience.

In 2000, Janis unexpectedly left the large art scene, founding a company and for over twenty years, abandoning individual works, he focused on modernizing museum exhibitions and integrating digital technologies into them.

Since 2021, the artist has resumed painting in his individual studio, and in 2024, he organized a solo exhibition titled "RE-EVOLUTION." The solo exhibition "L ELLE" is the most ambitious solo exhibition by Janis Mitrevics in nearly seventy years of his life.

The exhibition will run until the end of April, and meetings with artist Janis Mitrevics and curator Inga Steinmane will take place here on March 1, 14, and 15, as well as on April 19 at 2:00 PM.

Paintings 'in One Sitting'

It takes just a five-minute walk to the beach and to Pilss Street, 1, near the Dubulti Evangelical Church, to visit the Jurmala Center for Culture and Environmental Design, where an exhibition of works by professor, twice rector of the Latvian Academy of Arts Alexey Naumov titled "My Paris" has opened.

French music played, and speeches were made by the leaders of the French Institute in Latvia. And, of course, everyone admired the bright colors in the works of the professor, who works in a unique ala prima manner, meaning he creates paintings outdoors "in one sitting," in a couple of hours. Throughout his creative life, the professor has created paintings in various corners of the world – across Europe, in the USA, in China, and South Africa. The esteemed author has more than sixty solo exhibitions to his name, the Latvian Order of Officer of the Cross of Recognition, and the French Order of Arts and Letters.

But Paris is his first and probably greatest love, which ignited during the future professor's student years when he first traveled to France for an internship. Now we see Parisian parks and gardens (including a private park in the Bois de Boulogne), the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Pantheon, the Seine embankment – the exhibition features both early Parisian landscapes by the artist and works created during recent plein air sessions.

"Painting in Paris is always a pleasure," says Mr. Naumov. "You encounter the Parisian landscape, and all that remains is to capture it. This is truly my Paris, and these works have not been exhibited anywhere before. This is, of course, an intimate exhibition, with a small space in three rooms. This is a wooden house built in the second half of the 19th century, an architectural monument, once the Villa Bellevue summer house, which has been restored and offers a beautiful view. Previously, there were three more such houses nearby, but only one remains. And I am glad that among other things, I have exhibited here my very latest works created in the capital of France in November 2025. Two large works, and the others are small, tiny ones.