For his exhibition at the Mukusala Art Salon the young artist Klavs Loris has given the Latvian title “ESSME” – a kind of neologism (roughly translating to “Entity”) that the artist uses to describe a concentrate of a person's spiritual experience, where his searches and travails are gathered. According to the author, “ESSME – is a carrier of information, the ego you struggle with all your life and where you upload all your physical and spiritual experience.” The genre Klavs uses to express himself in art is landscape, which is so close to the Latvian mentality. Nevertheless, the created images contain a mystic mood under which the spectator gives in to the charm of the artwork. Possibly, because a private experience acquired during his 'nature trips' has been encoded in Klavs' landscapes, resembling a portrait of emotions rather than the environment. The impressions and the charm of personal experience intertwine in the works, forming journeys into the (un)known world where different layers of inquiry and surprises can be found.
Klavs has a heightened attention towards the process of creation of an artwork – the traditional landscape is created in a multitude of media simultaneously – oil, acrylic, ink, lacquer, etc., turning into an unpredictable, ecstatic procedure which appeals for an adequate perception. The large-format painting “Beaver Pond” shows a tiny lake in Latgale, where the colour of water is untypically clear and bright, by which the artist has spent nights, with each cell in the organism seizing on the passage of time in this uninhabited place. Physical traveling is a significant element in the creative process of Loris, as movement, according to the author, overturns the worldview, also affecting consciousness. A kind of internal travel takes place in the person, for which a natural landscape is merely a symbol. The works created specially for the exhibition at the Mukusala Art Salon testify that Klavs' ESSME belongs to nature.
Curator of the Exhibition: Diana Barcevska