Vidvuds Zviedris
"My painting process used to be more complicated. I used to paint over and over, searching for depth through destruction. This time, I trusted the first instinctive gesture," Vidvuds Zviedris says and adds - if art can stir the subconscious, shift the stone inside us, that’s great.
Vidvuds Zviedris (b. 1976, Rīga) studied painting at the College of Art and Design in Detroit (1995–1999). Since 2003, he has held eleven solo exhibitions at the McCormick Gallery in Chicago, including Far and Further Still (2025). Zviedris returned to Latvia in 2020. His works are held in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, the DePaul University School of Music, the Tisch Library at Tufts University, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the Ryerson & Burnham Library at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Library of Latvia.
Vidvuds Zviedris: "I keep circling the question of where we find ourselves today – surrounded by devices that let us witness, in real time, the most abhorrent and extreme expressions of human behaviour. The history of violence is being rewritten before our eyes. We used to rely on news reports – curated fragments, a journalist’s or photographer’s filtered interpretation of violent events. Now, we are virtually present in the act itself. We witness war, destruction, violence and suffering. It implicates us, draws us in – we watch, and, in a sense, become complicit. So who exactly are we – participants, passive observers, or accomplices?"

