Krišs Salmanis (1977 lives and works in Riga, Latvia. He works multidisciplinary using everything from animation, video, photography and sound, to his body, trees and words. Anything to make some sense of the brief moment of his existence in the infinite not-being before and after. What can be perceived as humour in his work is a form of exercise: “I work my boringness and predictability until it resembles drollness” The work that he made for the PMCA is very much influenced by the war in the Urkaine containing both fear and hope. Krišs:”It feels strange to be battling with ideas for an exhibition in such a delicate tiny gallery as the PMCA while next door artists are fighting for survival in the war. I believe that fundamentally art is about construction, but my show will long since have ended by the time rebuilding Ukraine can begin. So, my apologies for the bad art this time, and promise I’ll turn to something brighter in the future” Samanis represented Latvia at the 55th Venice Biennale of Venice and received the Purvitis Prize in 2017 (for a collaboration with the artist Anna Salmane and the composer Kristaps Pētersons).

Education:
2009 – 2010 Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany 1997 – 2003 Art Academy of Latvia, Visual Communications Dept.,
His works are in the collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art and the Art Museum of Estonia. I have taken part in numerous international artist residencies, including HIAP in Helsinki, Finland (2012), KAIR in Kamiyama, Japan (2015) and ISCP in New York, USA (2022).

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