Literally a Very Small Celebration
. Kristaps Ancāns & Pauls Rietums


Literally a Very Small Celebration
Kristaps Ancāns & Pauls Rietums
Curated by Inga Šteimane
June 6 – September 15, 2025
Art Station Dubulti | Celebrating 10 Years

This exhibition by Kristaps Ancāns and Pauls Rietums marks the 10th anniversary of Art Station Dubulti — a space that, since 2015, 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.

About the Exhibition

At the heart of the exhibition are proto-industrial modular systems, developed in collaboration with “Latvijas Finieris”, “Troja”, and “IGLU Soft Play”.

“Literally a Very Small Celebration” admires the fragile boundaries between art and design, while also touching on the soft zones where disciplines and authors — experience not only through shared materials and forms, but through mutual curiosity about everyday complexities in society. The real celebration isn’t just in form — it’s in attention, in pause, in the glance that lingers just a moment longer than it needs to.

Through spatial interventions and material experimentation, the exhibition reflects on Dubulti Station’s layered architectural identity — from its roots in socialist representational architecture to its embedded avant-garde formalism. Ancāns and Rietums celebrate this public space while gently reconfiguring its physical and symbolic presence.

Pauls Rietums: “For this exhibition, we’ve been working extensively with public funding, and it’s important how that funding is used – in ways that enhance the quality of space and return something of value to the public environment. I care deeply that public money isn’t used selfishly or as a vanity project, but instead contributes to the collective experience, to a space where public life unfolds. The aim is to work with the quality of space, not just to use it.”

Kristaps Ancāns: “Regarding the quality of public space, it can be understood in functional terms, or in terms of visual experience – as something visually enjoyable, acceptable, or not. Like, do we want to be in certain spaces? Perhaps we enter a space, and our head starts hurting because the visual quality of the environment is unpleasant. I think it’s important to emphasise that quality is not just functionality or accessibility, but also how we perceive the space; what mental structures operate within us.”

The exhibition blurs not only categories, but behaviors — inviting stillness where there was motion, and attention where there was habit. Visitors may find themselves sitting on sculpture or leaning against the concept. One might feel unsure whether they’re a viewer or a participant, whether the object is meant to hold them — or to hold an idea. In this space, function wears the mask of fiction, and fiction finds structure in the everyday.

Industry Collaboration & Support

The exhibition is developed in close collaboration with three leading Latvian industry partners whose contributions are not only material but conceptual. The design and fabrication process itself became an integral part of the exhibition’s narrative — a live dialogue between creative intention and industrial precision.

“Latvijas Finieris”, one of Europe’s most respected producers of high-quality birch plywood, provided the raw material that forms the basis of the modular system.

“Troja”, known for its custom solutions in wood processing, collaborated in the de"velopment and prototyping of the physical forms.

“IGLU”, internationally recognized for its playful and ergonomic children's furniture and soft play environments, brought unique insights into form, tactility, and adaptability — adding a dynamic layer to the design process.

Together, these companies contributed not only their expertise and infrastructure, but also a spirit of openness, curiosity, and cross-sectoral exchange. The collaboration between industry and artists here is not backstage production — it is part of the work itself: an unfolding story of shared experimentation and invention.

Kristaps Ancāns and Pauls Rietums have collaborated on environmental projects such as “Don’t Tell Tall Tales” and “By Chance or Appointment” in Latvia (both in 2024). Their joint work will also be featured in the exhibition “When the Wind Blows”, opening on 26 July at gallery domobaal in London. Following their exhibition “Literally a Very Small Celebration”, the two will continue working together to explore and blur the fragile boundaries between art and design, while redefining the categories of creative conception and fabrication.

Kristaps Ancāns (1990) holds a BA in Painting from the Art Academy of Latvia (2014) and an MA from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (2016). Since 2017, he has exhibited at Tate Modern and Peer Gallery in London, and has worked with gallery domobaal since 2021. His public art project “Polar Rainbow”, launched by Times Square Arts in New York (2022), is an augmented reality sculpture — a virtual rainbow stretching from the North to the South Pole. His installation “How much you would be willing to pay for a mystery of dark matter right now?” was on view on the facade of the Latvian National Opera and Ballet, Rīga (2021). Kristaps Ancāns first solo exhibition “Great Memories (sizewise)” in 2018 was produced by Art Station Dubulti. Ancāns has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including “Flora Fantastic” at Apex Art, New York (2022). He currently shares his time between London and Latvia, maintaining studios in both locations. He is also one of the co-founders of the interdisciplinary master’s programme POST at the Art Academy of Latvia.

Pauls Rietums (1998) holds a BA in Architecture from the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art (2020), and an MSc from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (2024). He was awarded the Orlando Lauti Award for his master’s thesis on speculative and performative reuse of vacant urban spaces. His solo exhibitions include “C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C” at the exhibition hall “Tu jau zini kur” in Riga (2021). He has also contributed image-based work to various publications and platforms. Since 2020, Rietums has worked as a scenographer and architect in both Latvia and Switzerland, engaging in projects that span architecture, visual storytelling, and site-specific design.

About Art Station Dubulti

For a decade, Art Station Dubulti has served as an inclusive, experimental platform for contemporary art in Latvia. As both a professional cultural institution and an accessible public space, it offers a model for how art can meaningfully engage society — not by isolating itself, but by embedding itself in the rhythms of everyday life. All exhibitions at Art Station Dubulti are curated to the highest professional standard and consistently attract wide audiences — both local and international. 40 unique exhibitions have been created in ten years (2015-2025). Art Station Dubulti was founded and continues to be run by art historian, critic and curator Inga Šteimane. She initiated a unique collaboration between the real estate owner, National Joint Stock Company Latvian Railways, the property’s supervising authority, Jūrmala State City Municipality, and the NGO Art Station Dubulti that creates the artistic programme.

Supported by:
Jūrmala City Administration
State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia
domobaal gallery (London)

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A conversation for https://mostmagazine.org

Literally a Very Small Celebration. How did the exhibition concept emerge?

A conversation between Kristaps Ancāns, Pauls Rietums and Inga Šteimane

 Inga Šteimane: You’re creating images for public discussion that reach beyond art, design, or architecture. In your proposal for “Literally a Very Small Celebration”, you emphasise the idea of expansion. What does that mean and involve? And what are its points of reference?

Pauls Rietums: It’s about creating intersections between disciplines. Each field can draw from another, making the process more informed and refined. The act of making art or design is no longer self-contained – it opens up to other languages and bodies of knowledge. It’s more a matter of overlapping than expanding.

Inga Šteimane: I understand that your goal is to update both aesthetic and ethical aspects. Your ambition also seems social in the sense that you aim to create better objects, better attitudes, and better relationships for people and the environment. How important is the ethical dimension?

Pauls Rietums: At the risk of sounding self-righteous, the ethical aspect matters a great deal to me. For this exhibition, we’ve been working extensively with public funding, and it’s important how that funding is used – in ways that enhance the quality of space and return something of value to the public environment. I care deeply that public money isn’t used selfishly or as a vanity project, but instead contributes to the collective experience, to a space where public life unfolds. The aim is to work with the quality of space, not just to use it.

Inga Šteimane: Speaking of overlaps, an important point of contact is the exhibition venue. Dubulti Station and Art Station Dubulti coexist.* Passengers and exhibition visitors share the same space and time – often, they are the same people. Everyone has their moment. The space is one hundred per cent a station and one hundred per cent a gallery. As you write in your exhibition proposal, the form in your work supports both concept and body – the object is made to hold the weight of a visitor and the weight of an idea. How did the exhibition concept emerge?

Kristaps Ancāns: I’ll link this question to the previous one. My approach is perhaps more abstract – I don’t focus so much on functionality but I’m fascinated by what functionality brings, and the conversations with Pauls are very important to me. I engaged in interdisciplinary collaborations and dialogues with scientists at Imperial College London, which raised questions for me about construction blocks and systems, abstract systems of building. That’s when the conversations with Pauls began. I’m interested in what an abstract building block – essentially, a module – can become. In my work with Pauls, I see a new dimension opening up: allowing the module to continue developing and become something. It might sound a bit like an ego trip, a little selfish, but in fact it’s about letting it grow, letting it find and inhabit a place, and then watching it develop – like a researcher or observer.

Inga Šteimane: So, this watching and projecting into the future involves both form – its self-movement, characteristic of art – and functionality, which is more typical of design and architecture. This generates additional conceptual layers.

Kristaps Ancāns: Exactly. It opens up a new field of possibilities. It’s like climbing in the mountains – what’s beyond this peak? What’s behind the next? It may not sound very logical, but it opens up a spectrum – new colours, new tools, new ways of constructing. Expansion. Then, form, functionality, and spatial relationships become a kind of material. A broader material vocabulary emerges. I become curious how these materials can be composed and used together. Although I wonder – is what’s happening in my mind perhaps disrupting logic or distracting from the core?

Pauls Rietums: You make some fantastic points! This was exactly our working process – merging a structured, functionalist way of thinking with an element of surprise and an expanded outlook. I’d also like to add that the Dubulti Station building itself is geometrically unique and sculpturally rich. It’s fascinating how this public space was built in the 1970s – an example of a public environment that is formally expressive yet also functional and contributes to a more meaningful everyday life.

Inga Šteimane: Would you say that the formal language of Dubulti Station specifically echoes in the forms you created?

Pauls Rietums: I wouldn’t say we directly referenced the station’s shape or visual situation. At no point did it become stylisation. The forms we arrived at grew from our collaboration – from long conversations and a sustained design process, as well as from material research. The art process and the design process merged. We both had a lot of fun with it. The final form is highly formal yet technically clever. It allowed us to use materials more economically and make the best use of the budget.

Inga Šteimane: One of your project’s innovative aspects, as you note in the exhibition statement, is that working with industry isn’t just “behind-the-scenes production”. The contribution of the companies is not only material but also conceptual. These relationships also carry ethical dimensions, as the manufacturers bring their context into your work.

Kristaps Ancāns: We’re collaborating with “Latvijas Finieris” and its subsidiary “Troja”, both of which manufacture veneer and veneer furniture. Another partner is “Iglu”, which produces children’s furniture and also manufactures its own base materials. What struck us as interesting is that both companies make the end products and the raw material itself.

Inga Šteimane: Did you choose the manufacturers based on the forms you were developing? Or did the partnership come first, followed by the form?

Kristaps Ancāns: In this case, we knew we wanted to work with these manufacturers, but we were looking for a material that would support the form – that wouldn’t resist or distort it. It was crucial that the material didn’t compromise the form. We searched for how the form could resolve itself in the physical world. That mattered. A functionally clever detail gave the green light for us to go deeper.

Pauls Rietums: Kristaps and I have had many valuable conversations throughout our collaboration – including about current geopolitics. We share similar views on what it means to live near borders, and what responsibilities come with that situation – how we are responsible for our actions and behaviour. Collaboration really matters to us both.

Inga Šteimane: Collaboration as a principle?

Pauls Rietums: Collaboration as a principle and also as a way of cultivating community.

Inga Šteimane: That’s a very interesting point, because artists tend to take over an entire space. But in your project, both of you and your partners have to be present together – in the same space, at the same time.

Pauls Rietums: I really liked the micro-project within this project – how we designed the exhibition poster. The poster is almost entirely covered by the logos of all the partners as its only graphic element. I find this formal solution quite interesting – the project isn’t just about physical compositions or objects, but about a composition of many collaborations. It’s not the most visible aspect of the exhibition, but we put a lot of effort into making this a genuinely collaborative process – redirecting resources towards a broader public benefit, a broader aesthetic experience. In other words, towards the quality of space.

Inga Šteimane: A question for Pauls. Based on your solo show C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C–C at the “Tu jau zini kur” art space in Rīga (2021), which featured twenty inflatable “tubes” made by hand from greenhouse film, as well as the concept behind your master’s thesis – centred on the idea of emptiness in the urban environment, with a word play around “vide”, which means “empty” in French and “environment” in Latvian – you seem to create both form and narrative from emptiness. Do you have a special sensitivity to zones of emptiness?

Pauls Rietums: The two projects that you mention at first can be called empty, but I think of them rather as not fully defined – malleable, places to ask questions of how else can we live and share space. During my studies, I had a tutor – Rubén Valdez, an architect and artist who often uses the term “spatial practitioner” to characterise someone working across the two disciplines. He really helped me find a way to integrate what fascinated me into a coherent practice. What interested me in his approach was that, above all, the focus is placed on the quality of environments, and a common lived experience of them. This influence has led me to ask similar questions when engaging with a range of contexts and scales. It has also helped me to not get boxed into a specific discipline. 

Inga Šteimane: Working with the quality of public space has an obvious socio-political dimension. I get the sense that, when working with space, you also give a social commentary.

Pauls Rietums: I’d say I do. I try to find ways of doing that without falling into clichés.

Kristaps Ancāns: Regarding the quality of public space, it can be understood in functional terms, or in terms of visual experience – as something visually enjoyable, acceptable, or not. Like, do we want to be in certain spaces? Perhaps we enter a space, and our head starts hurting because the visual quality of the environment is unpleasant. I think it’s important to emphasise that quality is not just functionality or accessibility, but also how we perceive the space; what mental structures operate within us.

Pauls Rietums: I completely agree – everyone deserves beautiful spaces.

Inga Šteimane: A question for Kristaps. About your particular attitude towards mechanisms. You have “a device that can move both your big and small dog to the other side”. You have mechanisms that fly butterflies, move a giraffe and a duck. In your earlier works, space was always connected to mechanisms. How is it in this project, where, if I understand correctly, there are no mechanisms? How do you realise your passion for construction here?

Kristaps Ancāns: In works from this period that you mentioned, the text is important – the text is actually abstract. Saying, “the chair stands on the floor,” creates a curl of meaning. Naming very static things and actions abstracts them.

Inga Šteimane: They become non-functional?

Kristaps Ancāns: Yes, the descriptive element changes the meaning of functionality. I think this is a good way to approach abstract things – by giving them a very descriptive name or definition. Saying a mechanism or object does only one thing makes it non-functional. Why would a device move only dogs and not squirrels or rabbits? Giving it one narrow function makes the device abstract.

Inga Šteimane: There it is, critical discourse emerging. That was my next question: Does your joint project, Literally a Very Small Celebration, include some critical discourse, such as criticism of departmental planning, when each sector is planned separately? Or is it something completely new?

Pauls Rietums: I don’t know if there is criticism. It’s more about joy – the joy of working together and learning from each other. Though perhaps there is criticism against traditional barriers or just the persisting tradition in design, architecture, and art.

Kristaps Ancāns: There is criticism of habits.

Pauls Rietums: We allow ourselves not to be so defined. One sector can flow into another.

Inga Šteimane: The Dubulti Art Station concept merges two sectors, two public infrastructures – transport and culture. From a bureaucratic planning perspective, these departmental interests do not intersect. But Art Station Dubulti is a space where they overlap, merge, and connect.

Kristaps Ancāns: I want to continue with resourcefulness – a concept describing resource intelligence, acumen, and ingenuity. It can be applied to the Dubulti station and also to Literally a Very Small Celebration. Pauls and I were very motivated in this direction. It’s like joining hands. Collaboration gives the project a different meaning and vector. Resourcefulness and collaboration allowed us to get along very well. We were both interested in how far we could go by pooling our resources and working together. Trust grew from this basis.

Inga Šteimane: Have there been disputes about materials or technologies?

Kristaps Ancāns: No disputes. We understood that, coming from different schools, fields, and backgrounds, we could find common ground. Our “literacy” level was surprisingly compatible. Pauls can think within the visual arts, and I can address functional issues.

Inga Šteimane: By Chance or Appointment – the installation in the forest – was your first collaboration?

Kristaps Ancāns: That was the platform where we realised we could understand each other.

Pauls Rietums: I want to add that how well we understand each other makes one ask why these fields are usually separated in professional practice. Because values, visual codes, and the sense of material are surprisingly similar. Our projects develop across disciplines. It seems perfectly logical to ignore and reject boundaries when they get in the way. When they are put where they don’t belong.

Inga Šteimane: Can we talk about letting go and going along with a mutual intervention in your collaboration?

Pauls Rietums: To me, that sounds like building walls where there were none.

Kristaps Ancāns: At the start of this conversation, Pauls spoke about the quality of space. The concept gave me new impulses for talking about building blocks and structures. So the process felt gratifying for each of us. By Chance or Appointment showed that we trust each other’s quality of thought. It may sound vain, but that’s one way to say that the quality of thought is vital throughout the project. Every idea that comes in must spark joy.

Inga Šteimane: So you enjoyed each other’s intervention!

Pauls Rietums and Kristaps Ancāns (laughing): That sounds terrible!

Inga Šteimane: This is our only editorial suggestion from MOST – to touch upon the anti-intervention intervention, and your explanation is fitting. Your collaboration is a good example of anti-intervention. You both have a separate background – Pauls developed his master’s thesis as a series of spatial interventions in Rīga to expand collective discourse and imagination about how to use vacant buildings without immediately turning them into commercial objects. Meanwhile, Kristaps created the Polar Rainbow, an augmented reality solution that enabled mobile users to observe a rainbow spanning the 74th meridian across the globe, with political connotations in the LGBT context. In a sense, Dubulti Art Station is also a gentle intervention – the art gallery “occupied” the station. Your project, Literally a Very Small Celebration, looks at both these contexts, creating an exhibition as a public space proposal. Please tell us about the experience of intervention and discourse expansion in your individual and joint projects.

Pauls Rietums: While working on my master’s thesis, I was deeply engaged in the process and was convinced my practice would evolve towards spatial reprogramming. But then I realised reprogramming had a time and a place. Doing it as the only practice can become automatic and start ringing untrue. The right contexts, reasons, and goals must exist to work this way and ask these questions.

Inga Šteimane: What would be the right reasons and proper goals for spatial reprogramming?

Pauls Rietums: Asking questions that matter. In my master’s, the question was how to respond to Rīga’s massive depopulation and the fact that quality living space in the city centre becomes an abstract financial tool rather space for the people. Dubulti Station is an amazing example of how complex, outstanding an inclusive environment can be. It shows that a fine, accessible space is an asset that can appeal to many. Intervention methods can be used to raise issues or start things off, but they shouldn’t be instrumentalised for their own sake.

Kristaps Ancāns: The Polar Rainbow project grew bigger than I expected; it gained its own momentum, an independent place and resonance. The project is ongoing – finding new meridians and places to intervene. It has partnerships with more than fifty human rights organisations worldwide. A community has formed around it. The rainbow is visible forty kilometres from the central axis. There were discussions, for example, about rainbow burning in Poland. But a touching conversation happened in Chile, beyond the LGBT discourse – people travelled to the coast to see a very delicate rainbow line. They went all the way to the ocean cliff to be part of this dialogue. To reach this discourse. That was very moving.

Inga Šteimane: In your proposal, you write that the exhibition centres on proto-industrial modular systems. What lies ahead – for instance, do you plan to create furniture combining art, design, and architecture?

Kristaps Ancāns: One context shaping our narrative was “anniversary furniture.” As we know, Dubulti Art Station is turning ten. Anniversary furniture became a motif for us to play with. But the form itself isn’t representative, it’s free and democratic. The form has two complementary parts; it’s built as a module and contrasts the historic connotations of “anniversary furniture”.

Pauls Rietums: I’m very curious what will happen to our modules in public space during the exhibition. I don’t want to plan everything out; I want to see how the forms and objects will live in the space and what will happen to them.

Inga Šteimane: This makes the project so fascinating – until the final assembly is built, we really don’t know how this form will fully manifest. Your process in this project includes something like a painterly nominal, and the “painting” unfolds through assembly.

Pauls Rietums: We know how each of us works spatially and compositionally, and we’ve been looking forward to finally tackling the space.

Inga Šteimane: In the Dubulti Station context, a crucial element in the exhibition is the replica of the original 1977 concrete ceiling panel, reimagined using IGLU Soft Play technology. Up on the ceiling, the suprematist motifs and the homage to Malevich’s square often go unnoticed, but now, they will be right there on the floor. How should we interpret this mirroring of the ceiling onto the floor? Is it a play with gravity?

Kristaps Ancāns: Reflecting the ceiling element on the floor invites an entirely different way of looking. You can even lie down on the form and gaze up at the original overhead. One of our starting points, when Pauls and I began working on the project, was the idea of offering new ways of seeing the station – experiencing the space through the works, through the vantage points and perspectives they provide.

Pauls Rietums: One of our earliest conversations was about viewing the station as a waiting room – where you slow down, look around, and wait for your train. We wanted to explore this sense of physical presence, this slower state of being. How do you become aware of a space? How do you experience it? The artworks are like prompts or signposts.

Inga Šteimane: With this ceiling-floor element, you’re introducing yet another physical posture – one that’s usually off-limits in a typical station: lying down. Public space normally allows for standing or sitting. You’re offering a third possibility – to recline.

Pauls Rietums: I was really passionate about this opportunity when Kristaps mentioned that we could work with IGLU Soft Play. I stand by it through and through. For one, I’m a big fan of taking naps. Secondly, I’m amazed how unacceptable it is to lie down in a public space.

Kristaps Ancāns: So true! Pauls can easily take a nap during work sessions.

Pauls Rietums: I’m used to it. I think it’s great.

Kristaps Ancāns: I’ve become used to it now, too.

Pauls Rietums: Yes, and I was genuinely interested in the idea of providing the possibility to lie down in the waiting room – an opportunity to legally lie down. And I was wondering what new qualities this brings to the station space – the fact that you can take that moment for yourself.

Inga Šteimane: Lying down, the view through the window looks different, too.

Kristaps Ancāns: For me, the question of trust is also essential. What kind of society do we trust? Where do we want to live in and place our trust in each other? In Japan, it’s entirely normal for someone in a train or metro to put their head on your shoulder and take a nap. This opportunity – to allow lying down at the station – has a slightly futuristic perspective.

Inga Šteimane: I see an ethical discourse!

Kristaps Ancāns: Exactly. We would like to live in a society where we don’t design benches where it’s impossible to lie down. For example, our society favours anti-homeless spikes on benches. While studying in Japan, I experienced that you can leave your laptop and other belongings, go 500 meters to a café, and come back to find everything where you left it. Or that universities have no security guards. Why would anyone harm you? And why would you take someone else’s things? I would love for us to live in a society where we trust each other, where you can fall asleep in public without having to clutch your bag.

Pauls Rietums: The overall feeling of the project is also about trust. We trust the manufacturers, and the manufacturers trust us. The artist trusts the architect, and the architect trusts the artist. The curator trusts the artists, and the artists trust the curator. You trust the station and the people around you, and you can lie down or even fall asleep in the waiting room. This project asks: why can’t we be like this more often? Why can’t we care for each other?

Inga Šteimane: For my part, I can only add that Art Station Dubulti also began with the trust that a regular railway station could function as a fully-fledged art space. It wasn’t a simple decision. It was a longing for a slightly transformed life where public space is less divided and exclusive.

Kristaps Ancāns: Literally a Very Small Celebration is sensitive to contexts. Let’s call things by their proper names – it’s about the hybrid war happening right here, on our doorstep. The project doesn’t come with pompous representation but offers something democratic, rooted in simplicity. I like the English words modesty and resourcefulness. In our situation, I wouldn’t support a pompous project getting “parachuted” into the hall. We absolutely shouldn’t lower our ambitions, but attitude matters – our attitude towards our life and society.

Inga Šteimane: Your project has vision and ideals. The foundation is pragmatic, but what’s above is almost utopian. Extremely beautiful!

Pauls Rietums: There’s a good English word – hopeful. It’s about how we could be. We could be more communal and stronger together.

Inga Šteimane: Many thanks for the conversation! And welcome to Literally a Very Small Celebration at Art Station Dubulti, on show from 6 June to 15 September.

* Currently, Art Station Dubulti may be Europe’s only professional exhibition venue in a functioning railway station. Open since 2015, it keeps adding a new dimension to an iconic building constructed in the Socialist Modernist style by St. Petersburg’s architect Igor Javein in 1977.

Translated in english by Inga Gedžūne