Until the end of December, Maxim Boxer Gallery presents Bipolarisation, an exhibition by Semen Khanin and Artur Virtmanis. This project by a small conceptual gallery founded by curator Maxim Bokser carries particular significance for Riga, not only because of its artistic ambition, but because of the intellectual and perceptual risks it is willing to take.
A vortex pulls the viewer inward. The instinct is to separate white from black, light from darkness, to read the word White, which is anything but white. The vortex deceives and disorients, yet ultimately insists on one thing only: the relativity of perception, the impossibility of a single viewpoint, and the absence of one correct opinion.
In a world that relentlessly demands that we choose sides, this restrained and thoughtful gesture feels quietly revolutionary.
At the centre of the exhibition stands POLARCONE, an installation by poet and interdisciplinary artist Semen Khanin. It takes the form of a hollow metal cone, black on the outside and white within. The interior is illuminated and equipped with polarising filters that reveal what is invisible to the naked eye. Yet in revealing, they also distort. White appears as black. Perception collapses into contradiction.
The polarisation of light mirrors the polarisation of opinion. It deprives us of the ability to form our own image of reality, replacing it with a system of filters and algorithms. POLARCONE offers no definitive conclusions. It is a melancholic work about the impossibility of transmitting meaning clearly, and about the inherent ambiguity of any attempt to arrive at absolute truth.
In dialogue with POLARCONE is SUPERNATURAL by the Latvian and New York–based artist and scenographer Artur Virtmanis. Executed in charcoal, the work is both an attempt and a demonstration of failure to depict the invisible. Virtmanis proposes a view of metaphysics through materiality. No matter how hard we try to penetrate deeper, we remain on the surface, unable to see beyond the layer of charcoal dust.
Virtmanis, who acted not only as an exhibiting artist but also as the curator of the exhibition, suggests that there are in fact four protagonists here: the installation, the drawing, the space, and the sound. The gallery is immersed in darkness, filled with an audio track derived from scientific models developed by NASA, translating the vibrations of a black hole into frequencies audible to the human ear.
As Virtmanis explains, the exhibition is constructed from a sequence of black forms and spaces. A black room. A black charcoal drawing on white paper. A black cone bearing an inscription that is not what it seems. Khanin, he notes, has created a kind of aggregate, a poetic machine that operates through a single word. That word is presented as absence. The word white is cut out as a void in a glass surface. It appears not to exist, yet through optics and physics it becomes visible, transforming into its opposite, from white into black. This is poetry reduced to one word, yet that word unfolds an idea the artists describe as super-subjectivity.
Maxim Bokser and Arthur Virtmanis.
The dialogue extends far beyond contemporary abstraction. Malevich’s Black Square is an unavoidable reference, but the lineage reaches further still, to Robert Fludd, the seventeenth-century English mystic who produced one of the earliest black squares. Asked whether the idea of white as emptiness carries political meaning, Virtmanis resists such a reading. The strength of the exhibition lies precisely in its openness. Super-subjectivity permeates all domains, allowing each viewer to discover their own reflections and resonances.
The spatial design plays a crucial role. The decision to work within a fully blackened environment transforms the gallery into an instrument of perception. In a conventional white cube, the effect would be fundamentally altered. Here, space is not a container but an active participant in the work.
This approach also foregrounds the often-invisible labour behind the exhibition. As an art critic, it is important to acknowledge the essential role of art producer Alexander Bokser. His contribution extended far beyond technical coordination. The exhibition’s conceptual focus on polarity, perceptual distortion, and the nature of the visible demanded a fully controlled environment in which meaning and space were inseparable.
Achieving the precise matte black uniformity of the walls required turning the gallery into a kind of perceptual laboratory. Bokser oversaw the complex logistics of installing a monumental 250-kilogram metal structure that determines the viewer’s movement through the space. He coordinated the sound design so that the vibrations of the black hole activate the space as the viewer approaches the cone. He worked with lighting to ensure that the optical systems and polarising filters functioned correctly without interference from external light. Alongside this, he managed the production of printed materials, multilingual texts, invitations, press outreach, and social media communication.
The result is an exhibition that operates seamlessly on both conceptual and sensory levels. Even viewers unfamiliar with the nuances of conceptual art can register its logic intuitively. Bipolarisation does not instruct or persuade. It destabilises, gently and persistently, reminding us that perception itself is always already compromised.
