Roberts Rūrāns solo exhibition: CHESTNUT AND THE UNIVERSE
Zuzeum is pleased to present the first institutional solo exhibition “Chestnut and the Universe” by the illustrator and artist Roberts Rūrāns on view from13 February. The exhibition reveals the wide range of the artist’s practice. From bold, internationally recognised illustrations to personal, spiritual paintings, in which a contemporary visual language intertwines with motifs from the Christian tradition.
As Roberts Rūrāns writes about the exhibition:
“God’s given law in the world is like the heart within the body, like a holy image among the marginalia of a medieval book, or like a chestnut in its spiky shell. Christ drew out the essence of the Law, calling us to love God and our neighbour. The further we move away from love – the centre of the cosmic wheel, the faster it spins, placing us in a moment where good seems evil and evil seems good.
My creative path has turned back towards the centre. From three-storey-high monsters drawn in the darkness of night to miniature figures of Christ and the saints painted with a fine brush. From graffiti to icons, from demons to angels, I also invite the viewer to read the signs of the times and to look for the narrow path.”
The exhibition brings together more than 80 works created between 2018 and 2025. They are arranged in sequences – from playfully ordinary, secular themes and commercial commissions to more personal, spiritual explorations, in which the fusion of tradition and contemporaneity is essential, as are playfulness in image-making and the embedding of the sacred in bodies – in their movements and gestures. Roberts’ visual language is based on simple, expressive forms arranged in bright, clearly structured compositions. A warm sense of irony sometimes slips into his hand, appearing in light-hearted media messages, as well as stripping complex, expansive ideas of their rhetorical heaviness. In this exhibition, illustration becomes an instrument for speaking both about the visual environment of our everyday lives and about quieter, harder-to-define yet deeply significant inner states and quests.
About the artist
Roberts Rūrāns is an illustrator and artist, a graduate of the Art Academy of Latvia, who shaped his professional path through hands-on experience – by collaborating with cultural institutions, media outlets and brands in Latvia and abroad. His work can be seen in projects for The New York Times, WeTransfer, Hermes, airBaltic, Madara Cosmetics, and others, where an illustration becomes a clear and easily readable visual language between art and design. Critical discourse on contemporary art often speaks about the relationship between form and content, and the balance between the commercial and the conceptual – the core themes that also indirectly resonate in Roberts’ professional practice.
