BIO — ARNOLDS ANDERSONS

Arnolds Andersons was born in 1991 in Riga, Latvia—the year Latvia fully restored its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This historical rupture forms an important backdrop to the artist’s practice, where personal biography intertwines with the psychological landscape of the post-socialist environment. He currently lives and works in Riga, Latvia. In 2014, Andersons graduated from Kingston University with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours. His work has been exhibited both in Latvia and internationally, including in South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 2019, he received the Special Prize of the Baltic Young Painter Prize. More recently, his work was presented at the international auction house Christie’s in London. Andersons’ works are held in the collection of the TAAD Art Foundation and Zuzans Collection.

Growing up in a post-socialist society as a young gay man, Andersons experienced rejection, fragile belonging, and emotional betrayal. Within this environment, painting became his primary means of orientation and survival—a space in which fear, longing, and instability could be structured and processed. His works are predominantly figurative, offering a raw and often poetically brutal insight into the realities of mortal existence. He depicts a contemporary decadent lifestyle in which the visible surface masks underlying structures of power, control, and submission.

In Andersons paintings, grace exists alongside disintegration—both in bodily expression and in silhouettes that appear simultaneously seductive and endangered. His digitally collage-like approach allows anonymous figures, industrial objects, and fragmented spaces to coexist, generating a sense of estrangement paired with a peculiar calm. These figures often inhabit a liminal state—between presence and disappearance, desire and discipline. Sharp, architectural lines and flat colour planes form the artist’s meticulous visual language, balancing control with emotional tension.

In recent years, Andersons’ practice has expanded beyond painting to include installation and multisensory elements. In his latest exhibition, Adrenalin, the artist explored memory as a bodily experience, using scent as a powerful and unconscious carrier of recollection. Specially created scent compositions referenced the atmosphere of the 1990s—leather, fuel, dampness, and institutional interiors—functioning as emotional catalysts that reactivated experiences of power, dominance, and vulnerability. Here, identity is not presented as a fixed form but as a process—slow, accumulative, and irreversible.

Throughout his practice, Andersons remains engaged in a continuous search for what is concealed and unrevealed within narrative structures. His works propose a space in which the body becomes an archive—a site where traces of pressure, fear, desire, and memory persist, forming a visual language that reflects how we come to be who we are.

Education

2011 – 2014 BA(hons) Product Design, Kingston University, UK

2007 – 2011 Riga Design and Art School, Latvia

Courses

2024 Royal Drawing School, Drawing Intensive course

Solo exhibitions

2025 Jan ADRENALIN, ASNI, Riga, LV

2023 June PRELUDE, Sunblanket Art Center, Seoul, South Korea

2022 May LETSPLAYAGAME, LOOK! It’s a Gallery , Riga, LV

2021 Nov Alone, Neoklasika, Riga, LV

2020 Sep Stranger, D84, Riga, LV

2019 Sep Present, Oscar Isberian, Chicago, USA