Anna Egle and Ieva Putniņa’s duo exhibition Power Station
Exhibition dates: 24 January–1 March 2026
Opening: 23 January 2026
Kim? Contemporary Art Centre
Curator: Zane Onckule
Kim? Contemporary Art Centre launches its 2026 exhibition programme with Power Station, a joint exhibition by artists Anna Egle and Ieva Putniņa, continuing to provide space for dialogue-based creative ideas to unfold.
The two artists share a long-standing friendship and co-participation in various art events. The upcoming exhibition is their first major collaboration and, at the same time, the first display of Ieva Putniņa’s work at Kim? and Anna Egle’s most ambitious exhibition at the institution to date.
Power Station develops as a conversation between Egle and Putniņa, a cross-fertilising visualisation of a charged creative cosmos, purposefully moving beyond today’s accelerated pace of life, and the resulting culture of productivity demands and intellectual cynicism. Through interplay between Egle and Putniņa, across four successive power station acts-segments, the exhibition presents a set of the artists’ new works in the media of large-format painting and sculpture, and highlights the need to (re)connect with natural processes, maintain inner harmony, and cultivate individual energy resources.
Egle’s ecofeminist practice is permeated by an interest in contemplating the culture of creative activity as a spiritual path, in which the true meaning of life can be found through the roots of essence. These sculptural structures-objects challenge preconceptions about the robustness of sculpture, adopting a softness of form executed in both saturated and pastel tones. Laconic volumes mix with technically complex creations, and these often larger-than-human works suggest the visual qualities of archaic forms, while the universal archetypes from the collective unconscious that envelop them also stretch into written language, with Egle noting down and summarising poetic impressions after the completion of the work cycle.
Putniņa’s painting is akin to the surrealism-hyperrealism tradition in that often something disconnected from seemingly tangible reality provides the only assistance in detecting and grasping what is depicted in the works. The artist’s creative practice fuses laborious work in the studio, research into the natural wilderness, and random everyday observations – recordings of trophies of the moment which develop into peculiarly endearing characters full of semantic significance and self-sufficient actions. Visually, Putniņa’s painting language combines immersion and training the attention – every essential detail is meticulously depicted, and the materiality of the object is captured or the movement is noticed. In the course of the process, the author discovers new fields of research, literally and figuratively going out into nature and learning about the heritage of local arts and crafts, and then incorporating it into her work, complemented by episodic painting on stones and wood.
The exhibition unfolds within a field of heightened latency, a charged interval in which form has not yet crystallized. Forces circulate without hierarchy, folding inward and pressing against their own emergence. This opening state is one of incubation: a protective density marked by instinctual momentum, quiet resistance, and the will to persist. What is present remains unseen, yet insistently becoming.
From this compression, the exhibition dilates into a more permeable condition. The atmosphere loosens, allowing exchange, drift, and infiltration. Possibility replaces tension as ideas hover between suspension and germination. This zone operates through porosity and flow, animated by rhythms of learning, intuition, and gradual accretion. Cognition here is non-linear and non-directive, vegetal in character, arising through nourishment, duration, and mutual influence instead of assertion.
The third zone gathers weight and stillness, introducing a contemplative threshold. It functions as a passage, rather than a destination, where temporal cycles are sensed somatically and held beyond articulation. Matter and immateriality momentarily converge, and time folds across origin and dissolution. The tone is ritualistic and archetypal, invoking continuity, disappearance, and transformation without narrative closure.
In the final space, the exhibition resolves into resonance, not conclusion. Shadow sharpens attention, producing an intimate intensity that feels both reverent and grounded. Gratitude circulates as an undercurrent, alongside an acknowledgment of lineage, ancestry, and the sustaining intelligence of the natural world. Instead of declaration, feminine power surfaces through presence unfolding in restraint, stillness, and depth. The exhibition does not end; it disperses, leaving behind a residue of devotion, generosity, and elemental attunement.
The exhibition is accompanied by a public programme aimed at a wide audience, including a meditation session and a poetry-writing masterclass led by Egle, as well as a fieldstone-painting workshop created by Putniņa.
Biographies
Ieva Putniņa (b. 1991) is a Latvian artist working in painting, animation, film and performance. Visually, her works frequently bring to mind an older artistic tradition but her paradoxical treatment of subjects allows them to be situated in an entirely contemporary world. She has presented her work at the Rainis and Aspazija Museum; Gallery 427; Low; Maboca festival; Ag Gallery; the Elephant Hall at Riga Circus; the exhibition The Moon Bends Back at SIC gallery in Helsinki; the exhibition Last Tale by the Riga gallery LOOK! and the Lithuanian contemporary art gallery MENO NIŠA; the group exhibition An Average Comet at Harkawik Gallery, New York; and elsewhere. Ieva Putniņa was the first recipient of the Vija Celmins Foundation Grant (2025).
Anna Egle (b. 1990) is a sculptor from Riga. Her experience in sculpture covers a broad spectrum – from fine, gem-like sculptures to large-scale projects with 6- and 9-metre-tall clay figures cast in bronze. In 2017, Egle earned a master’s degree in sculpture from the Art Academy of Latvia. Since 2011, she has held personal exhibitions in Latvia and taken part in group exhibitions in Latvia and elsewhere in Europe. Her works are represented in private collections in the USA, Denmark, Austria, Latvia and Lithuania. For over a decade she has collaborated with sacral sculpture projects in the USA, where her works continue their life in the context of cultural and sacral spaces.
Kim? Contemporary Art Centre and exhibition team:
Executive Director: Evita Goze
Program Director: Zane Onckule
Project Manager: Katrīna Jauģiete
Communications Manager: Žanete Liekīte
Sales Director: Dārta Purvlīce
Mediators: Māra Marija Avrameca, Betija Briede, Linda Šterna, Emīlija Austra Lodiņa, Alise Sedleniece
Technical team: Aldis Bušs, Andris Maračkovskis, Romāns Medvedevs
Design: Anna Ceipe
English translation: Valts Miķelsons
Latvian proofreading: Ilze Jansone
English proofreading: Will Mawhood
Anna Egle’s acknowledgements: Ieva Putniņa, family and Jānis Pelēkzirnis
Ieva Putniņa’s acknowledgements: Anna Egle, family and Juris Jankovsks
Supporters of the exhibition: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Media Port