Memory Flashback

Exhibition Līga Purmale. The Garden of Past Pleasures

In her 2012 series of works, Flashback, Līga Purmale returns to the principles of photorealism. Through the prism of her family, the artist reflects on the events in Latvian history from the early 20th century until 1975, when she started her professional artist's career. Purmale draws inspiration for these works from her personal memories, family photo albums, books from the home library (on the margins of which she made drawings in her childhood), and selected press photographs typical of their time. This dense series of paintings fuses the past and the present. Through her personal experience, the artist thematically and formally paints in her characteristic styles from different periods. In these paintings, it is essential to pay attention to both texts serving as labels and those that appear rather as details since they may point to the time and location of the memories chosen by the artist.