Curator of the exhibition: Ieva Kulakova<\/p>\n
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Writer Edmunds Fr\u012bdvalds in his miniature about the birth of Famous Chillie Willie states: \u201cIt couldn\u2019t be said that Chillie Willie came into the world unexpected. Perhaps the world didn\u2019t expect it and even his parents may have had no inkling. However, Chillie Willie himself was waiting for this moment impatiently, burning to decorate magazine covers and greeting cards. He was already aware that he was not like all the others.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/span>Famous Chillie Willie appeared in Normunds Br\u016bveris\u2019s works in April 2002 when he was living in the artists\u2019 community building in Jersey City, NJ. There he found a piece of cardboard with a poem written on it about \u201cChillie Willie chilling out.\u201d Br\u016bveris took that board to his studio and the next day a strange and comical character, Famous Chillie Willie, was born. \u201cWith this spark I lit a fire. Chillie Willie became a reflection of all humanity. The involvement of this bizarre character in my paintings allowed me to truly show life, its meaning and our needs,\u201d \u2013 says the artist.<\/p>\n<\/span>After Br\u016bveris moved to the USA and along with Famous Chillie Willie, the artist\u2019s paintings\u00a0 changed in their structure, composition and artistic means of expression, as we recall them in his works in the late 90\u2019s, preserving only their painterly mastery and the characteristically large dimensions. Yet, specially for the exhibition in Riga various works of smaller scale have been created.<\/p>\n<\/span>Chilly Willy is a very well-known character in American culture \u2013 a cartoon hero. Chilly Willy, a naive and good-natured penguin living in Alaska, was created by artist Paul Smith for the Walter Lanz studio in 1953.\u00a0 Until 1970, this character often earned the title of the country\u2019s most popular cartoon hero. One of the prototypes and sources of inspiration for the character was possibly the American film actor Chill Wills. However, in Bruveris\u2019s paintings, Chillie Willie transforms and becomes a specific embodiment of the turn of the 20th century archetype. He does everything like a normal human being \u2013 he eats, drinks and loves, he sometimes meets famous people and in general shows us his world that exists parallel to ours. It is an excellent illustration of the fragmented perception of our times, where our eyes flit right and left in the attempt to follow everything that stimulates us.<\/p>\n<\/span>We find many parallels with the real life in Br\u016bveris\u2019s works. Here we can trace events in the author\u2019s personal life, current socio-political issues, as well as references to the work of other artists and cultural events. One of such examples is the painting \u201cPope Famous Chillie Willie Innocent XIII\u201d (2004) that kindles to remember chefs-d’oeuvres of Vel\u00e1zquez, Titian and Raphael along with the crashing masterpiece by Francis Bacon, \u201cStudy after Vel\u00e1zquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X\u201d (1953).<\/p>\n<\/span>There is quite a lot of cruelty in Bruveris\u2019s works that is only superficially softened by the brightness of the colours and the comical image of the main character. His works are like children\u2019s colour cartoon films in which unbelievably cruel things take place. This inevitably leads us to refer to the \u201cTheatre of Cruelty\u201d of the early 20th century French poet, playwright and director Antonin Artaud. He thought that this was necessary in order to reawaken audiences and to break down the barrier between a \u201cman for himself\u201d and a \u201cman for others\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/span>The director\u2019s approach Br\u016bveris employs to form his stories is complemented by artistic means of expression and techniques used to construct the works. Thus the passion in the subject of the painting is often accompanied by an inner tension between the materials where the interventions of other materials serve to stir up the surface of the work, create an extra spatial dimension and sometimes offer other \u2013 self-sufficient information. Looking at the parts where there has been a particularly complicated technical execution, the sense of lightness offered to the viewer is very surprising. Different forms of expression exist side by side here \u2013 from the stylistic of realism to art brut. The most multi-layered works are filled with scribbled texts, scraps of appliqu\u00e9 and cartoon-like drawings, and along with spontaneity, form a complex arrangement. This also largely determines the openness of Br\u016bveris\u2019s works to interpretation, which, in addition to the previously described meta-narrative, removes any ties between the works and past events. This is precisely why the curator of the exhibition Ieva Kulakova invited writer Edmunds Fr\u012bdvalds to supplement the 41 work in the Riga exhibition with stories about the life of Chillie Willie, to completely derail the viewers and give them the chance to make up their own story.<\/p>\n<\/span>The exhibition \u201cFamous Chillie Willie in Riga\u201d is complemented by a catalogue. The publication has a print run of 50 copies and it will be available electronically. The catalogue was created by artist Ernests K\u013cavi\u0146\u0161 and includes texts by Antonin Artaud, Normunds Br\u016bveris, Edmunds Fr\u012bdvalds and Ieva Kulakova.<\/p>\n Normunds Br\u016bveris<\/span> was born in 1971, in Aizpute, Latvia. He was educated at the Liep\u0101ja Secondary School of Applied Art and has graduated from the Latvian Academy of Art, Department of Painting, where he attended the workshop of monumental painting lead by professors Kaspars Zari\u0146\u0161 and Aleksejs Naumovs. At the end of 2000 he moved to the USA, where he currently lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. In the spring of 2002 he accidentally came across the image of Famous Chillie Willie and since then he has been using it in paintings of various formats, giving rise to both laughter and tears. Normunds Br\u016bveris mainly works in oil and acrylic on canvas, plywood, planks and paper. He has also produced works in stone, sand and on the walls of houses.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Curator of the exhibition: Ieva Kulakova Writer Edmunds Fr\u012bdvalds in his miniature about the birth of Famous Chillie Willie states: \u201cIt couldn\u2019t be said that Chillie Willie came into the world unexpected. Perhaps the world didn\u2019t expect it and even his parents may have had no inkling. However, Chillie Willie himself was waiting for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,4,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-30","category-kim-exhibitions","category-past-exhibitions"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n