Weekend Portfolio: Ivars Gravlejs

Shopping Poetry, 2012–

Shopping Poetry finds beauty in ordinary products, reinventing the traditional still life. The project is a playful reflection on the mundane process of acquiring commodities in contemporary capitalist society. Shopping Poetry is an ongoing series that Gravlejs began during an artist residency in Schöppingen. It was initially inspired by the facial expressions that shoppers make when looking at their grocery receipts. The artist’s methodology is simple: Gravlejs generally chooses the products spontaneously based on factors such as visual beauty and cost. At the till, he organises the items on the belt so that they not only work aesthetically, but also result in a receipt that can be read poetically, and takes photographs with his compact camera of both: the still life and the receipt.

Ivars Gravlejs (b. 1979) holds a Master’s degree from FAMU in Prague. However, he has been taking photographs since his childhood. Often Gravlejs is described as as an “enfant terrible”. He plays with language, with combinations of words and images, and mystifies the spectator with a certain degree of infantility. The art of provocation is typical of Gravlejs who, as it happens, can pretend nothing special is at stake. At the moment Gravlejs is PhD student and the teacher of “speculative spiritual photography” in Czech Republic.

To see more of Gravlejs’ work please visit the website.