During my recent visit to Venice I stumbled across the Republic of Latvia entry which is not located within the official Biennale grounds and so is free to visit. I was drawn to it through the phrase “Contemporary Landscape” and found myself interested to find out more.
The exhibition is small but beautiful. The majority of the works are located in a black lit room and painted with luminescent water-based acrylic paints on a mixture of large taught canvases with loose painted material to the sides and below them. It is quite magical to see and explore due to the strange lighting and glowing visions surrounding you. However, it is also in part due to the nature of the room that the works are displayed in.
The room is large and mainly square. Within this square is a construction that frames each of the four walls, like the skeleton of a box. This created a very pronounced barrier between myself and the work. Something I have not generally experienced to such a degree in a contemporary gallery setting. The huge framing gave the works a sense of grandeur. The knee-high columns which are not there to be sat on do have steps over them. This allowed me enter the painted landscapes and was reminiscent of climbing over a style often encountered on country walks. I felt like I was becoming part of the painting and entering the landscape. Passing through the frame. This feeling was accentuated due to the large-scale of the works opening up in front of me and also due to the nature of some of the works wrapping around the corners of the room.
The overall effect is magical and quite beautiful. Even though the works are painted in luminescent paint they succeed in being subtle and this subtly goes a long way to echoing that found within nature. 
In some ways they could almost be underwater landscapes as well dry-landscapes and I enjoyed this ambiguity within the works very much.
On the way out, although I rather suspect you are meant to notice it on the way in, I came across a hole in the wall that makes a barrier to the entrance to the room. Standing on tip toes I could look though it to see a framed landscape within the room. 
The work became framed behind three frames, distancing me even further from the work and giving a sense of remote observation of a far off scene. I could almost imagine I was seeing this view through a parting in some trees and having the sense that it was a privileged view, a glimpse of something not often seen. The framing also went some way to underline the fact that this is a formal painting and is, perhaps, to be viewed as such. I found it really interesting to note the change in scale and the effects this had on the work from this small distant framed vantage point to having the ability to be extremely close and in an unframed setting.
The Biennale is running until the 27th November 2011 and I would highly recommend taking some time to visit this small exhibition. For more information about this exhibition and the artist Kristaps Gelzis click here.
Helen Wheeler 