Anna Egle and Ieva Putniņa’s duo exhibition “Power Station” review
Imagine that for a few minutes you have forgotten what an electricity bill looks like, a phone charger, and that light state of panic that takes over when the battery drops below 20 percent. Imagine that you enter a room where the word “power station” refers neither to voltage nor to kilowatts, but to something much older, quieter, and harder to measure. It is with this feeling that Anna Egle and Ieva Putniņa’s duo exhibition “Power Station” begins at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre.
Upon entering the exhibition hall, a pleasant, almost physically palpable sense of calm overtook me. Standing tall opposite of me is a finely crafted art object – vertical, bright, but quiet, with what appears to be a sun wheel at the top and earth plant patterns in the lower part. It serves as the first landmark, like a North Star in this spatial journey. The object carries within it the presence of naturalness, lightness, unhurriedness, and a bit of mysticism. Its stance recalls the figure of the Sun’s Daughter – not illustrative, but perceptible in feelings – as if she had descended from some parallel reality to draw the viewer into another world with flower hands and a calm dance movement.
This world is surprisingly familiar and at the same time slightly shifted in time. It closely resembles Earth, but without humanity’s insistent desire to regulate, order, and accelerate everything. At the level of feeling, it takes us deeper – to a parallel earthly reality where animals, plants, stones, and processes that occur even if no one films or publishes them play the main role.
Moving further, the gaze is momentarily confused by seemingly empty walls. At first glance, they even look dirty – as if mud or random winter remnants from the street had splashed onto them. But when approaching, a completely different scale of world is revealed: miniature forms, finely painted figures, microscopic objects that fill the white space with a completely different character. This moment of revelation is essential and surprising – the exhibition demands slow looking, training attention, the ability to accept that what is significant is not always large and immediately noticeable.
The journey through the space continues, constantly revealing something new, like a series of small surprises that each slightly irritate the viewer’s usual preconceptions. The eye sees something so very familiar but also neglected in everyday life. Like, for example, the painting of green frogs that innocently stands by the wall, as if saying nothing. Thoughts continue to fly, memories of nature’s wonder experienced in childhood awaken in my mind. I cannot fail to mention the art of painted stones, which associates with cottage garden decorations, but organically intertwines with the exhibition’s concept. A cat that frightenedly watches you from under the bench turns out to be a stone egg that smiles, successfully deceiving you just like a realistic bird scarecrow tricks flying earth inhabitants. “Found treasures” organically weave into the exhibition’s overall logic, and yet another representation of an animal figure is no less successful at mimicking a living creature, reminding us how easy it is to confuse the living with the non-living if we look superficially.
At this point it becomes clear that “Power Station” is not an exhibition about objects, but about states. About energy that does not attack, but accumulates. About a creative cosmos in which Anna Egle and Ieva Putniņa operate as two mutually resonating fields. The exhibition is structured in four consecutive “acts” that resemble a natural process – from pre-birth tension to settled, saturated calm. It consciously moves beyond the modern dictum of productivity and intellectual cynicism, offering the viewer the opportunity not to “understand,” but to be present.
Egle’s sculptural practice here reveals itself as an ecofeminist, spiritual journey, where form is not a carrier of weight, but of gentleness. Her works question the usual notion of sculpture’s robustness – they are soft in their presence, even if materials deny it. Archaic forms, echoes of the collective unconscious, and poetic impressions fixed after the process create the feeling that these objects were not made, but “grown.”
Putniņa’s painting, in turn, balances on the border between the surreal and the overly real. In her works, seemingly random everyday observations transform into images with their own rules and internal logic. Scrupulously depicted details, the presence of materials, and nuances of movement indicate long-term attention training – about looking as a practice. Impulses gained from nature and episodes of craft heritage become equally significant storytellers in Putniņa’s works.
Particularly vividly in my perception, as well as concentrated in the exhibition’s theme, is one not too “intrusive” work – a painting with sea finds integrated into the frame: seashells, pebbles, fragments that still carry the memory of salt and water within them. The image shows an egg from which a human leg is breaking out. This motif is not shocking, rather quietly unsettling. The egg as the primary form of life, the human as an integral but still clumsy component of nature. Here the human is not the center of the world, but one of the elements – as fragile as the shell, as subject to processes as a stone on the seashore. This is the beginning of life in untouched nature, before claims and boundaries.
After visiting the exhibition, a sweetly bitter aftertaste remains. The feeling that you have been in a place where time flows differently, and returning to everyday life requires slight adjustment. “Power Station” is an exhibition that does not try to charge the viewer with new information, but rather reminds us that energy also arises in silence, attention, and the ability to be in the process. And that is precisely why it is so timely.
The exhibition is on view at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre from January 23, 2026 to March 1, 2026, at Sporta Street 2, k-1, LV-1013. Opening hours: Mondays: closed; Tuesday – Sunday: 12:00 – 18:00. Entry is free.
Author: Māra Viška
