NEWS
EXHIBITIONS FUTURE PAST ARTISTS
ARTWORKS 20th CENTURY ART PROJECTS ART FAIRS ABOUT US E-MAIL

BARBARA GAILE
MYSTERIOUS LIFE OF PAINTINGS

28.02.2008. - 22.03.2008.

Title of the exhibition “Mysterious Life of Paintings” is taken from the catalogue introduction by Professor Eduards Kļaviņš, written for Barbara Gaile’s solo exhibition “Discoveries” at Riga Gallery in 2004: “Tonality of colours changes with lighting and the viewer’s movement along the painting, and so its elusive, mysterious life receives additional qualities.” The artist has worked on this project for two years and created eighteen new paintings.
Gaile works on texture and colours of paintings for a long time; polishing and rubbing of paint acquires a particular significance as well as the choice of special technological means (pigments, varnishes, purple, gold) to achieve “a sum of hazy, tarnished and dim mirror surfaces”. The exhibition is a dedication to mystery – emotions and feelings translated in colours.
Helēna Demakova wrote on Gaile’s paintings: “Her abstractions are as abstract as a sea fragment influenced by numerous factors or an exotic leaf subjected to human touch and weather caprices. One could see in her works magnified fragments of a microscopic world or condensed and cartographic macro events, reflecting psychological, not material environment, retaining just the pleasure of human touch from the latter.”

Barbara Gaile (b. 1968) lives and works in Paris since the early 1990s.
The artist
• graduated from the Janis Rozentāls Riga Secondary Art School,
• studied at the Painting Department of the University of Sunderland (Great Britain),
• received M.A. in arts at the Painting Department of the Latvian Academy of Art.

Barbara Gaile has received 5 important awards:
• Prix Bornhauser-Molinari (France, 2000),
• Medaille d’Argent aux titres des arts du Merite et devouement fran?ais (France, 1998),
• First Prize, „Geo-Ģeo“ – 4th Exhibition of the Soros Centre of Contemporary Art-Riga,
• Painting of the Year Prize, Agija Sūna Gallery Competition (Latvia, 1995),
• Eva Lange Award (Sweden, 1994).

The artist’s works are found in the collections of the National Museum of Art and Pedvāle Open-Air Art Museum as well as in several private collections in Latvia and abroad. Barbara Gaile has organised 7 solo exhibitions, represented Latvian art at the International Art Fair “Art Moscow” in Russia and exposition “Surprising Latvia” in France, 2005.
BARBARA GAILE. Purple. 2007