{"id":4396,"date":"2026-02-08T05:28:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T05:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/4396\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T05:28:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T05:28:29","slug":"riga-contemporary-charts-a-new-course-for-baltic-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/4396\/","title":{"rendered":"Riga Contemporary Charts a New Course for Baltic Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"A<\/a>Dealer Jeffrey Rosen (l.) served as consultant and advisor as founder Zane \u010culkst\u0113na mapped out what Riga Contemporary could be. Photo: \u0122irts Ra\u0123elis<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, international art fair circuit newcomer Riga Contemporary opened in a sleekly converted former warehouse in the Latvian capital. The more than forty participating galleries hailed mainly from Nordic and Eastern European countries, but a handful came from as far away as the U.S., Japan, China, South Korea and Indonesia. While Latvia isn\u2019t the first locale to come to mind when most people think of contemporary art, the fair\u2014which was free with prior registration\u2014drew 12,000 visitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s completely flabbergasting when people are like, \u2018Why Riga?\u2019 Even people based in Riga!\u201d Jeffrey Rosen<\/a>, co-director of Tokyo-based Misako & Rosen and co-president of the board of the New Art Dealers Alliance, told Observer. (He was wearing a T-shirt that read \u201c99% joke 1% art.\u201d) Rosen not only showed Lawrence Leaman<\/a> and Nathan Hylden<\/a> at his booth at Riga Contemporary but was also an instrumental behind-the-scenes player in its launch. The core curatorial direction for the invitation-only fair came from Rosen, and his familiarity with fair models that are less expensive and more casual, like NADA, likely helped Riga Contemporary find its footing.<\/p>\n

His initial approach to building out the fair centered on inviting more mainstream commercial galleries with an artist from the Baltics on their roster. \u201cI think if those spaces participated, they actually could do well,\u201d he said. Yet despite early interest, those art actors ultimately didn\u2019t partake. \u201cThey don\u2019t necessarily have the time to be adventurous,\u201d but the ones who did show up were \u201cwilling to de-prioritize the sales part of this for a moment, with a longer view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, Rosen has a personal connection to Latvia. At 17 years old, he dropped out of college and moved to Riga based on the suggestion of a close friend who had gone there as an exchange student in the mid-1990s. \u201cAlthough my time here was brief, it left a really strong impression,\u201d he reflected. \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to come back and was really curious about what was happening here in terms of the art world, because that was my world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A\"A<\/a>The fair aims to highlight the underrepresented Baltic and Nordic scenes while inviting dialogue across global art communities. Photo: \u0122irts Ra\u0123elis<\/p>\n

The Baltic region has been rather barren as far as contemporary art goes; Riga itself has no contemporary art museum. The closest neighboring fair, Art Vilnius in Lithuania, \u201cwas definitely a point of reference for us, but mostly as an example for perseverance,\u201d Zane \u010culkst\u0113na<\/a>, founder of Riga Contemporary and Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (Riga\u2019s first player with a sustained contemporary art program), told Observer. \u010culkst\u0113na participated in Art Vilnius\u2019 first edition 16 years ago: \u201cIt felt like nobody came,\u201d she recalled. \u201cLike, nobody. Yet they did not give up. Right now, it has become a very good regional player. Radical changes require radical patience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2021, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre has been an active participant in the international art fair circuit, with recent appearances at NADA Miami (2022), Paris Internationale (2023) and Warsaw Gallery Weekend (2024), among others. In 2022, Kim? launched Riga Confidential, a micro fair that brought together nine galleries. The Baltic and Nordic references at Riga Contemporary mostly came from the Kim? team as a way to be \u201cinclusive of the existing scene,\u201d which \u010culkst\u0113na refers to as one that \u201cunderpromises and overdelivers, in many respects.\u201d The goal of the fair\u2019s debut edition was attracting local attendance. Starting next year, the focus will broaden to include international visitors and collectors.<\/p>\n

\u010culkst\u0113na completed an arts administration program at Columbia University\u2014mixing accounting, business law, copyright, fundraising strategies, art history, education and philosophy\u2014and brought that knowledge back to her homeland. \u201cIn combination with missing infrastructure and an economic situation that could be better,\u201d she said, \u201cthe result is that there are very few collectors. The whole concept of actually acquiring art and having art at home or at the office is still not common in Latvia.\u201d Moreover, the \u201cpost-Soviet post-traumatic effect is that art and money do not mix. One is pure, and one is dirty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Latvian gallery Masksla XO\u2019s booth showed a sculpture installation by Nils Jumitis, and gallery assistant Biruta Auri\u0146a<\/a> was \u201csurprised in a good way\u201d about the fair\u2019s turnout and \u201choped it will be a tradition.\u201d The gallery, which has been open for 25 years, is one of the oldest on the scene and has shown work in the past at POSITIONS in Berlin and viennacontemporary. \u201cWe have to cultivate this culture of buying art, of supporting art,\u201d Auri\u0146a said of the lagging Latvian art scene.<\/p>\n

\"A\"A<\/a>Subsidized by Latvia\u2019s Ministry of Culture, Riga Contemporary sought to reduce financial barriers and foreground artistic exchange over sales. Photo: \u0122irts Ra\u0123elis<\/p>\n

Polina Berlin<\/a>, a young gallery based in New York, showcased works by Casey Bolding<\/a>. The eponymous founder was born in Riga but grew up in the U.S. and worked at Paula Cooper before opening her own space. \u201cI was astounded by the level of thoughtfulness and innovation,\u201d she said of the fair, where she also showed Amanda Ziemele<\/a>, who represented Latvia at the last Venice Biennale<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of refreshing to be the only New York gallery here\u2014that never happens,\u201d she quipped. \u201cEveryone\u2019s been very welcoming, which is so nice and perhaps unusual in the art world. It\u2019s a very different group of people than you would encounter at other fairs or in other cities.\u201d She appreciated the scale especially. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to offer something for everyone\u2014and neither is this fair. It\u2019s almost like a back-to-basics thing\u2026 It loses this special specificity when it gets too big.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Rosen, orchestrating that special specificity was the point. Based in the Otsuka neighborhood of his adopted city, the Texas-born dealer felt on the periphery of the commercial art world, \u201cboth geographically and in terms of the power structure.\u201d When he opened Misako & Rosen together with his wife, \u201cit became evident pretty quickly that the best way\u2014the only way\u2014we could function is if we had found galleries that are in a similar position as us and work together.\u201d Rosen\u2019s gallery attends NADA in Miami, Art Basel Hong Kong, Frieze Seoul, miart in Milan, Art OnO in Seoul and a lot of smaller fairs in Japan. He and the Kim? team have collaborated before in Japan, as part of Rosen\u2019s Hot Spring Project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fair model is broken,\u201d he continued, in that many are so profit-driven that it isn\u2019t sustainable for anyone beyond a handful of mega-galleries to continually participate. A fair like Riga Contemporary is \u201csubversive\u201d in part because it\u2019s not as expensive to attend as it\u2019s subsidized by Latvia\u2019s Ministry of Culture, minimizing the economic risk and allowing for non-transactional exchanges. \u201cYou try to create a situation which is not off-putting, which is not elitist, but at the same time is not, in any way, selling short art, artists and the thought behind the production of art,\u201d said Rosen. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of oddly anti-capitalist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fair\u2019s public program of panels addressed topics ranging from new models of patronage to the evolving role of technology in artistic production. In the opener, \u201cThe Role of Galleries in the 21st Century,\u201d gallerist Olga Temnikova<\/a> (half of Temnikova & Kasela Gallery<\/a>, headquartered in Tallinn) noted: \u201cWe don\u2019t host people in the Baltics that much\u2014I mean it\u2019s hard to get people here.\u201d She herself helped spearhead a twenty-five-gallery micro fair, ESTHER<\/a>, in New York at the Estonia House, an event subsidized by the Estonian government.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan this work? I feel like it can,\u201d Rosen mused. \u201cAs long as the fair is able to sustain the funding that makes this possible for us to come here without spending an arm and a leg\u2014why not?\u201d He admitted that it requires a degree of commitment and support from participants. \u201cThey don\u2019t necessarily have to be the same people coming back. But I think those who stick with it will benefit from sticking with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An\"An<\/a>Zane \u010culkst\u0113na, founder of Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, helped shape the fair\u2019s regional identity and long-view curatorial strategy. Photo: \u0122irts Ra\u0123elis
\nMore in art fairs, biennials and triennials<\/p>\n

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