Monuments with Butterflies in Their Stomach

Monuments with Butterflies in Their Stomach

A conversation between curator Inga Šteimane and artist Gļebs Panteļejevs

Gļebs Panteļejevs is one of Latvia’s leading sculptors, known for provocative works that engage with a wide range of contexts. Born in 1965, he graduated from the Art Academy of Latvia in 1991 and has since become a major presence in both monumental and free-standing sculpture in the post-Soviet era. His work combines classical craftsmanship with an ability to address contemporary themes. At the same time, he remains deeply drawn to modernism and its abstract language of reduction and synthesis, which enriches and expands his formal vocabulary. Panteļejevs currently heads the Sculpture Department at the Art Academy of Latvia.

His solo exhibition Monuments, featuring a new body of work, brings together an extraordinary range of sculptural approaches, from Rodin-like plastic drama to modernist reduction and a distinctly postmodern, Gormley-esque sense of irony. Staying true to a practice that draws heavily on classical traditions while constantly testing their limits, the artist creates works that abandon conventional methods without sacrificing form or narrative. The emotional charge of these sculptures is almost revelatory.

Inga Šteimane: Wherever moral values need to be commemorated – principles, ideals, remarkable individuals – your work seems indispensable. It would be difficult to imagine twenty-first-century Latvian monumental sculpture without works such as the monument to Oskars Kalpaks (2006, granite and steel, Rīga), the memorial to the victims of communist terror The Black Threshold (2003, iron, Rīga), the monument to Gunārs Astra (2022, bronze, Rīga), or the recently unveiled monument to basketball coach Valdemārs Baumanis (2025, metal, Daugava Athletics Hall). How do you see your own identity as a moralist? Do you recognise such a role in yourself? And if so, where does it come from?

Gļebs Panteļejevs: Oblico morale!* I doubt it has anything to do with me being some morally elevated being. I certainly don’t see myself as morally superior. I’m an ordinary person, not a hero. Just a regular bloke, maybe even fairly rough around the edges. Yet somehow I keep ending up with these subjects and these commissions. They find me and then carry me along. It’s like being washed ashore and suddenly seeing Colonel Kalpaks standing there in front of you. At that point, there’s no going back.

Šteimane: What’s striking is that you’re able to approach moral themes without becoming didactic. There’s no uncomfortable grandstanding in your work. Moral values appear with dignity and self-respect. Whether it’s honesty, resilience, endurance, self-sacrifice or the surrender of one’s ego, these qualities emerge in your sculpture with remarkable conviction and stability. It makes me wonder if the works also reveal something about yourself. That there is a certain value system at work in the way you see the world.

Panteļejevs: There is. I won’t deny that. And you’re right about pathos. My generation, those of us who lived through the Soviet period, developed a kind of allergy to it. We instinctively distrust subjects that are inherently grand or heroic. We grew up rejecting pathos. When I look at Zoomers, at Generation Z, I don’t see that same allergy. They’re often quite comfortable with pathos and use it as a mode of expression. And to be fair, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. But when it comes to morality, I’d rather speak about my relationship with the subjects and the people I work on. Every subject teaches me something. I always take something away from every project. When I was working on the monument to Astra, I identified with him so deeply that it genuinely changed me. Situations where I would once have compromised or stayed quiet suddenly felt different. I found myself able to resist. To object. A lot of him rubbed off on me. The same happened with Kalpaks. I began to understand his sharpness, his integrity, his sense of wholeness. The tragic subjects affect me too. It literally hurts to work with tragedy. People often say that a doctor shouldn’t feel their patient’s pain. I’ve never developed that kind of immunity. The subject, the person, always gets under my skin. Working on Astra brought moments of revelation. I found myself thinking: what exactly am I worried about? What am I complaining about? Here’s a man who endured it all and carried himself with complete calm. What right do I have to torment myself? My life is fine. Everything is fine. Then again, strange things started happening. It felt as though the project itself was taking on Astra’s fate. Every time something had to be transported, there was freezing weather and strong winds. A crane would hit a tree. Some new force majeure would appear out of nowhere. I told this to Kārlis Alainis, who cast the bronze monument. He replied with perfect wisdom. He said: ‘What did you expect? Astra spent his whole life in labour camps. And you thought this was going to be easy?’ 

Šteimane: That’s profound empathy.

Panteļejevs: Yes. I love the people I make monuments to. I genuinely love them. I couldn’t do the work otherwise. It’s not only that they make me a better person. I also end up sharing in their struggles. I experience, vicariously, what they had to overcome, what they had to fight for. My works change me. 

Šteimane: Could you sketch out the narrative of Monuments? The exhibition unfolds across two floors. If I understand it correctly, the first is where drama holds its ground through existential questions and enduring materials. The second gives itself over to euphoria, perhaps even something psychedelic. And there the materials are contemporary and ephemeral.

Panteļejevs: The paradox is that, when I begin working on an exhibition or an individual sculpture, I never start by thinking about real life, current events or social commentary. That’s not where it begins for me. Quite the opposite. I try to access something beyond the empirical world. The starting point is transcendental. But sooner or later you realise that war is here, crises are here. Reality is powerful. It exerts its influence, draws you back in and bends you to its will. That’s how Jesus appears. That’s how the homeless wanderer appears. That’s how a story about freedom starts to unfold.

Šteimane: You’re referring to the largest work on the first floor, the Statue of Liberty. The sculpture contains at least two powerful references: the crown of thorns evokes Christ, while the bags suggest a wandering homeless man. Does the work carry a moral message?

Panteļejevs: There’s nothing didactic about it. I’d hate for people to see it as a moral lesson. I’m not trying to tell anyone that wealth is bad and poverty is good.

Šteimane: One could just as easily argue the opposite – that poverty is bad, and the question is what to do about it.

Panteļejevs: Exactly. Take Aija Zariņa. Her work often carried a very direct and uncompromising message: be free in spirit, cast off whatever oppresses you. That’s not what I’m trying to do. What I hope is that, through my work, I’ll find –

Šteimane: – a third way?

Gļebs Panteļejevs: Kindred spirits. People on the same wavelength. I’m not interested in offering instructions or proving the practical usefulness of art. Nor do I want to preach that art exists to make people better. That’s not a requirement. If it happens, that’s another matter.

Šteimane: Why is the largest work in Monuments called Statue of Liberty? And why is its central figure a wandering man carrying plastic bags?

Panteļejevs: I started thinking about the freedom of the soul. You can lock yourself up just as effectively as anyone else can. We recently rebuilt our studio and ended up with perfect working conditions. But the project also required a fence. I already had a hedge and climbing vines and felt a fence was completely unnecessary. Yet there I was, welding it together. I hated every minute of it. I had trapped myself in a dead end of my own making. Total misery. The soul is a sensitive creature. As for Statue of Liberty, it didn’t start with me seeing a homeless man and getting an idea. The idea was much more abstract than that.  Ideas usually come to me in several streams at once. Like data moving through a fibre-optic cable. Different signals. Different clues. Hints. At first, I was making crowned heads. Just heads. Different crowns. The first one had a crown of thorns. Then the larger figure emerged. When I welded the cloak, the homeless man appeared. Later I saw someone outside a shop and thought: yes, that’s him. After that, everything became clear. The work turned almost meditative. Not mechanical in a dull sense. Quite the opposite. Once the main idea is there, it carries you forward.

Šteimane: How did you arrive at this openwork technique – these short metal fragments, almost like drawn strokes, welded into a lattice?

Panteļejevs: Some people might think of Antony Gormley, but welding together small pieces is actually a common technique. What mattered to me was lightness. My new studio is a tall white space, and it made me want to ‘draw’ in the air with dark lines. I wanted the sculpture to look as though it had been sketched onto the white walls – transparent, hatched, almost weightless.

Šteimane: Arch, the sculpture showing a man and a woman in conflict, uses a similar technique, but feels much heavier.

Panteļejevs: In Arch, I’m showing how men and women are drawn to one another and fight each other at the same time. That’s an eternal subject. Technically, the structure is denser. The hatching came about intuitively. I wanted a strong spatial presence on a large scale. You could even say the technique helped generate the image itself. Sometimes the material gives birth to the idea.

Šteimane: What dominates in Statue of Liberty – ethics or aesthetics? Human empathy or form?

Panteļejevs: That’s a difficult question. Compassion is definitely there. Sostradanie or co-suffering, as the Russians say. Absolutely. But I don’t want to declare it openly. Formally, what’s important is that this wandering figure, this homeless man, gives shape to emptiness. That’s one of the great delights in art. There was nothing there. Just air. Empty space. Then suddenly you’ve brought structure into it. Not filled it. Structured it. For that to work, it has to stay connected to reality. Emptiness is perfect. A vacuum is absolute perfection. Then I step into that perfection and introduce something. Any material – even a diamond – is rough compared to emptiness. My colleagues tease me because I always want everything under control. No accidents. No surprises. They’re probably right – it’s not my healthiest trait. 

Šteimane: Could that desire for control be a search for meaning? A way of keeping meaninglessness at bay?

Panteļejevs: Control itself is an illusion. Planning is just another way of making God laugh. But we keep doing it. Statue of Liberty is an intensely structural work. That’s why I enjoyed making it so much. Physically, materially, mentally.

Šteimane: The title inevitably recalls both Latvia’s Freedom Monument and America’s Statue of Liberty.

Panteļejevs: Yes, there is a political context. But my frame of reference is global. I can see freedom changing. I can see it being reshaped. I don’t want to reach for grand words and say freedom is being humiliated or violated. But I do see how willing people are to give it up. And the first freedom they sacrifice is mental freedom. Freedom is not a fact. Freedom is an imperative. More than anything, freedom is a state of being. Astra remained inwardly free despite spending years in labour camps. A billionaire, meanwhile, can live in a mental prison and never be free. 

Šteimane: Conflict appears throughout the exhibition. Why?

Gļebs Panteļejevs: Conflict has become more intense. Everywhere you look, things are polarising. In politics, for example, the centre is disappearing. What’s left are the right and the left. The centre has lost all credibility.

Šteimane: It has run out of ideas.

Panteļejevs: Exactly. The centre has no ideas. And the intensity of conflict keeps growing. For more than four years now, I’ve felt as though I’ve been living in a permanent struggle. Mentally, I carry a constant sense of conflict.

Šteimane: We live in an age of social acceleration, where constant updating has become the norm – and often a marketing slogan. Art has been caught up in this acceleration at least since the nineteenth century, and in today’s post-post-postmodern condition it seems unavoidable. I remember interviewing you some twenty years ago, when you suggested that art might eventually discover new boundaries. How do you see that idea today? Should art place greater value on skill? Could we begin to see the cult of innovation as a neoliberal ideology and define new boundaries through craftsmanship and mastery of materials? At the moment, it seems to me that the dominant artistic skill is the ability to connect contexts at speed – an acceleration of contexts.

Panteļejevs: Looking back, I’d only partly agree with what I said then. Today it sounds a little too simple. I wouldn’t put it that way anymore. Given what’s happening with technology, and especially with AI, I think our tactile, sensory understanding of form is bound to change. AI creates illusion and virtuality. Our understanding of material in visual art may change dramatically. In music, the material is sound, not the violin. Visual art may reach a point where the material itself becomes immaterial. But there’s another issue. I remember Miervaldis Polis arguing that art comes from the idea of knowing how to do something. Of having the knack, as he put it. You have to be able to do something well.

Šteimane: The question is – what exactly?

Panteļejevs: Take a simple example. The sun shining through the rain is beautiful. It’s a genuine aesthetic experience. I love it. It sparks thoughts and emotions. But it isn’t art. It’s already there. It exists without us. Art has to be made. Someone has to bring it into being. Art is something you do, and it has to lead somewhere. Sometimes I push back against what I see at some of our partner universities. There are brilliant, talented teachers working there, but the emphasis is often on process. The result doesn’t matter. People ask, ‘Why are you so concerned with the result? Do you want to pollute the planet? Better not to make anything at all. Let’s develop a concept, an idea, and leave it at that.’ That frustrates me because I don’t see the logic. Imagine applying the same thinking to car manufacturing. We focus entirely on the process. There’s a chassis. There are wheels. And then what? That’s all it takes?

Šteimane: Your work brings together things that don’t always sit comfortably together in contemporary art. You work with classical materials and often in a serious register. There is drama in your sculptures. At the same time, there’s playfulness, irony, even something distinctly postmodern. Somehow all of this coexists quite naturally. And your works are also deeply personal. That brings me to a question. You’ve said that, given the choice between an image and a sign, you prefer the image. Why? Does the image allow you to tell stories, while the sign demands a greater degree of abstraction? 

Panteļejevs: The main difference lies in the degree of generalisation. A sign is a higher level of abstraction. Beyond that, I’d say something else: I don’t find the image – the image finds me. I like events and narratives in art, and they naturally lead towards the image. The art I grew up with was full of stories. My grandfather dreamed of becoming an artist and studied at VKhUTEMAS. He was forced to leave because he had concealed his origins as the son of a wealthy Don Cossack family. After that, he became a career military officer because the alternative was a labour camp. He studied there in the 1920s, when Rodchenko, Klucis and other great modernists were teaching. Yet in our family it was Aivazovsky and Repin who were revered – artists whose work was powerful, emotional and intensely narrative. I grew up believing that art is where things happen. Caspar David Friedrich was my favourite artist when I was thirteen, and he still is. I discovered abstraction later, once I had already become professionally interested in art.

Šteimane: So you’re a Romantic at heart. And that brings me back to something you said earlier. Romanticism celebrates nature as an untameable force, while you’ve spoken about your desire to control things. There’s a tension there. Almost a drama of opposites.

Panteļejevs: I’d agree with that. For the Romantics, the point wasn’t that a ship was sinking or that a man was small and insignificant. The point was that nature is the ideal. What Romanticism tells us is that the life we’ve built for ourselves – our routines, our daily existence – is ultimately trivial and inadequate. Real life is nature in its extremes. Storms. Mountains. Ruins. That’s where the fascination lies.

Šteimane: Returning to your Statue of Liberty. This free man with his plastic bags, who has no job, who answers to no boss and follows a schedule of his own making – he has escaped the system. Is he freer than the rest of us?

Panteļejevs: We shouldn’t romanticise him. A homeless man suffers. He’s cold. He’s hungry. He’s in pain. And yet he doesn’t wake up to an inbox full of messages demanding an answer. In “Moscow to the End of the Line” (“Moscow-Petushki”), Yerofeyev brilliantly describes the alcoholic’s cry of liberation – that moment when absolutely everything becomes irrelevant. The rest of us are tied up in structures, routines, responsibilities. He isn’t. That’s precisely the tension that interests me. On one side, there’s the urge to control, organise and structure the world. On the other, there’s Caspar David Friedrich’s vision of nature in its wilderness and extremes. Somewhere between those two poles is where I seem to live.

Šteimane: I was recently listening to Nicolas Bourriaud, who has a gift for spotting and naming broader tendencies in art and society. He suggested that we are currently witnessing an aggressive infantilisation of the public sphere. Looking at certain tendencies in the work of younger artists – and emerging art has always been an excellent mirror of society – I find myself noticing not so much aggression as a certain infantilism. How would you respond to that?

Panteļejevs: I certainly wouldn’t connect that to any particular generation. I’ve taught for long enough to know it isn’t a generational phenomenon. I’d point to other things instead. Young people today are demanding. They have a strong sense of entitlement. That’s how they’ve been brought up. But to say that their work is ultimately defined by childishness or immaturity? I wouldn’t go that far.

Šteimane: By infantilism, I mean a refusal to take responsibility or to form independent judgements.

Panteļejevs: That’s a fair distinction. In that sense, I do sometimes see it in works that want to engage with current issues but never arrive at an independent position. That’s where I recognise something of the Greta Thunberg mindset. Better that half of humanity perish so the other half can live in some utopian communist future. That’s what strikes me as immature. Otherwise, I see a great deal of serious reflection and responsibility in the work of younger artists. What does concern me is their sense of history. Very often, they simply don’t know it. They know there was Latvia, then the Soviet occupation in 1940, and now there’s Latvia again. But what was here before that? How did the country come into being? What happened here before 1918? Those things often need explaining. Maybe that’s down to the way they’re taught now, I don’t know, but the sense of continuity is often missing. The approach today is to start with the present – with contemporary art – and then work backwards. Perhaps I’m biased because I grew up in a different time. Still, I’m not sure that is the right approach. Contemporary art doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It grows out of something. It has roots. Take Ancient Egyptian art. Students often haven’t studied it yet, so they simply don’t connect the dots.

Šteimane: What will visitors encounter on the second floor of Monuments?

Panteļejevs: You described it well – there will be something psychedelic about it. There will be colour. There will be the freedom and sense of possibility associated with the 1960s. Think of Yellow Submarine in that animated film from 1968. There will be brightly coloured butterflies on the walls. But I’m fully aware that I idealise the sixties. For a long time, I thought it was the last great moment of genuine freedom. Then I read Keith Richards’s autobiography and realised that was an illusion. The sixties in the West were, in many ways, a dark period. People lived in constant fear of war. There was Vietnam. Crime was rampant. The economy was struggling. The police suppressed creative freedom. What captured the imagination was the sexual revolution, fashion, popular music, album covers. That’s why we still idealise the period today. It’s an illusion built on another illusion.

Šteimane: Your sculptural installation Butterflies in the Stomach on the second floor also speaks about freedom in its own way. There are important connections with the works downstairs.

Panteļejevs: Yes. At its heart, it’s a question about freedom and illusion. The first floor will hold a huge butterfly-tank – a Corten steel sculpture titled Butterfly Effect. Then the very same form reappears upstairs, but at a different scale and in completely different materials: polyurethane foam and paint. Exactly the same shape, yet it creates a completely different experience. Poles apart. That’s actually a key idea in the exhibition. I wanted to show that the same form can produce entirely opposite effects. Drama and euphoria. Gravitas and psychedelic lightness.

Šteimane: The exhibition then becomes a broader reflection on how the same idea can take radically different forms. Different codes, different ways of reading the world. There’s something profound in that.

Panteļejevs: It’s really about the ambiguity of form. The same form can contain different meanings. It can be used in different ways. Everything in our world has more than one possible use.

Šteimane: The word monument, derived from the Latin monere, carries meanings such as ‘memorial’, ‘reminder’, ‘warning’ and ‘advice’. Is there anything your exhibition wishes to advise us?

Panteļejevs: These days, memory and remembrance are the territory of the memorial. I’m more interested in the monument as we understand it today. A monument is no longer primarily a reminder or a lesson. Above all, it’s an aesthetic category. What matters is its immediate emotional impact. Even in professional slang, calling something ‘monumental’ is usually a compliment.

Šteimane: Thank you very much for the conversation.

* ‘Oblico morale!’ – a quote from the Soviet comedy film The Diamond Arm (1969).

Text: Inga Šteimane, curator of the exhibition

ABOUT ART STATION DUBULTI

Since 2015, Art Station Dubulti (Jūrmala, Latvia) has operated as an inclusive and experimental platform for contemporary art. A space that has redefined how contemporary art can inhabit and activate public infrastructure. Rather than being repurposed from one function into another, the Dubulti station has evolved into a hybrid environment where passengers and gallery visitors coexist. This overlap has shaped a layered and inclusive cultural experience, integrating contemporary art into daily life for a broader public. The Station’s dual identity guides the curatorial vision of its founder and director, Inga Šteimane. Supported by the Jūrmala City Council and the State Culture Capital Foundation, the programme maintains a high curatorial standard with a strong local and international pull.

Exhibition dates:
12 June – 2 September 2026

Opening hours:
Daily, 9 am – 6 pm

Admission:
Free

Art Station Dubulti
https://artstationdubulti.lv

Meet the artist and curator:
14 June, 2 pm
12 July, 2 pm 

9 August, 2 pm
Support: Jūrmala City Council and the State Culture Capital Foundation