Daiga Grantina

Born in Riga, Latvia, 1985

Lives and works in Paris, France

Using light as a building material, Daiga Grantina creates objects, films and, most recently, paintings, working with materials considering their potential to refract and contain volumes of light. Through their lightness and choice of material, Grantina effeminates her works with grace, at times evoking mythology or folkloric literature. Various "Buff" fabric sculptures are suspended with hooks and cables, creating a voluminous space that is both integrated into the booth and forms an all-encompassing sculptural form. The painting intervention in the booth also marks the non-separation between space, volume and sculpture. A minefield / mind-field of strings, red flexi-tubes and other materials gestures surround the  the sculptures' own formal flight-path, momentary leading the visitor's gaze back towards the work itself, suggesting the manipulation of light as structural material as much as a tool of orientation. Daiga Grantina says: “If I have a concrete idea, if I know what it should look like – what the end result should be, then there is nowhere for me to take the next step. In that case, the idea becomes a product, or a fetish of mine. I try to pierce through this. That means overcoming myself and looking at: how I can move forward; what are the work’s prospects; and what kind of scene, tunnel or window this work will open. That is much more important then the end result in itself. Probably the most crucial thing is – what sort of effect does the work have on me; the sense that I realize that it is somehow affecting me (either positively or negatively), and that lets me continue working on it.”

GALLERIES:

Emalin Gallery