Sunset Hour
From 12 to 14 June 2026, the Great Exhibition Hall of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art will host the first and only presentation of the multimedia installation "Sunset Hour". The project weaves the creative practices of Anna Heinrihsone, MAREUNROL’S, Reinis Sējāns, and Jānis Šipkēvics into a unified spatial experience.
Sunset hour marks a transitional state – a moment between the end of the day and the beginning of the next act. It could be described as a liminal zone in which the familiar perception of space begins to shift. Forms become more indefinite - perhaps even unrecognizable – light softens, while attention simultaneously sharpens. In truth, the sunset hour is but a fleeting instant in which calm and tension, stillness and perpetual movement coexist at once. Sunset becomes a moment through which one may perceive both the fragility of the world and its continuous motion.
What does it mean to remain present within a moment of transition?
The exhibition, presented in the Great Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art for only three days, brings together – in a deconstructed spatial composition - the artistic practices of Anna Heinrihsone, MAREUNROL’S, Reinis Sējāns, and Jānis Šipkēvics. Sound, sculpture, light, movement, and environment merge into a multilayered experience. Rather than constructing a linear narrative, the work creates a perceptual field in which the viewer is invited to move between presence and alienation, noise and silence, the authentic and the simulated.
Anna Heinrihsone’s glass object introduces the motif of the forest into the space – simultaneously as reflection and as a construction of depth. It functions as a threshold between exterior and interior space, between viewer and landscape. Here, the forest does not emerge as a decorative element, but as a psychological and symbolic presence.
Meanwhile, MAREUNROL’S large-scale sculptures continue the artists’ ongoing interest in the relationship between the human being and the surrounding environment, the construction of identity, and the instability of visual perception. Organic forms encounter the tension of urban aesthetics, producing a state suspended between body, image, and landscape. The video work Forest, exhibited in the first room, reveals the original context of these objects – in movement, sound, and continuous transformation.
The spatial dramaturgy of the installation is unified through the sound environment created by Reinis Sējāns and Jānis Šipkēvics. Rather than illustrating the visible, the soundscape forms an autonomous perceptual layer that synchronizes the installation’s disparate elements into a shared rhythm. Sound becomes a structuring presence within the space - a vibration suspended between anxiety and meditation.
Sunset Hour offers an experience in which the boundaries between object, sound, body, and environment gradually dissolve. The installation reflects upon the human capacity to preserve sensitivity in a world where the overabundance of information and imagery increasingly replaces direct experiences of presence. In a time of geopolitical tension, when reality continuously competes with its own representations, art can no longer remain neutral – it becomes a form of presence, empathy, and choice. Within this context, Sunset Hour invites viewers to search for silence within noise and to preserve the ability to remain attentive, sensitive, and critically aware.
The video work and installation Forest (10 min 58 s) was created in collaboration with Iveta Gabaliņa, Krišs Apšenieks, Jette Loone Hermanis, Kristians Aglonietis, and Modris Svilāns. Soundscape fragments: Rolands Pēterkops in collaboration with Reinis Semēvics, Artūrs Liepiņš, Spāre Vītola, Rūdolfs Dankfelds, and SignLibra. MAREUNROL’S assistant: Samanta Blekte.
The work was originally created for MAREUNROL’S solo exhibition Fieldwork: Invisible Exercises at Riga Art Space in 2023 (curated by Auguste Petre).