Each painting in my collection has a story behind it and I cannot and would not pick out any single one: all of them are part of my life, a part of myself. With this site, I would like to open up to you a bit and to share with you things that interested and fascinated me for the last ten years, to make you aware of my exciting experience, my territory of joy and freedom.
There are so many avenues open for a collector today, but one of the most prestigious and popular is collecting art. Collecting, of course, is not the same for all, as it tends to have different purposes and objectives. There’s an academic debate about two fundamental types of collecting, and art professionals use different terms, collection and selection, to distinguish them[1]. The difference lies in that an art collection is created within a certain semantic context; it has to be bound by some kind of common logic, internal purpose or essence. An art selection, on the other hand, usually consists of items that are not connected in any way other than belonging to the same line or genre of art.
Collectors use different principles of selection, and the easiest one is whether you like an item or not. That's the way how the RZ Collection started, which is what Raivis Zabis told us in the first catalogue. Has anything changed in eighteen years? Is the RZ Collection, formally speaking, a selection, or has it grown to become a collection unified by a certain inner meaning?
Not claiming to be exactly right, I would venture to express my view, and would be happy to discuss it with anybody who might be interested. My opinion is that the RZ Collection can definitely be called a collection of contemporary art. How could I prove this? I'm afraid that, unfortunately, any brief explanation would not sound too convincing. Answers to such questions are usually read between the lines and have to be time-tested.
I would say that the unifying inner meaning of the RZ Collection lies in the relationship and communication between the collector and artists, in the events taking place around artworks of the collection, in how the collection evolves, and, just as important, how it has affected the owner and how it keeps influencing others.
We did our best to discuss this issue quite openly and in detail. Even if you take only a quick look at the contents of our Catalogues and website articles, you will surely notice that the cornerstone of the RZ Collection, the focal point of discussion and consideration in the course of forming the collection, has always been the theme of creative inspiration. It is just as appealing to the collector, as to the artists and art critics who work with us. As I see it, the interest in the subject of inspiration was one of the main incentives for the selection and acquisition of artworks, and became the kernel of the interesting and unique RZ Collection.
You must have seen the fascinating ripple effect caused by a stone thrown into the water. Ripples expanding across the water, spreading out over a larger and larger area, sometimes covering the whole surface of water. We think it is a great metaphor to compare the ever-expanding ripples across the water to a spreading effect of inspiration and its influence on people's lives. Inspiration of an artist gets embodied in an art piece; it is transmitted to viewers, delights and inspires them. Yet more viewers get encouraged to come to love art, to recognise and explore it, to speak, write and sing about it, to enrich their lives with it, to acquire and preserve it, to found museums, galleries and exhibition halls, to bring art to yet more people and further inspire them to be creative; and finally, to inspire all of us to think and reflect on everything that happens to and around us, to make sense of our lives. To paraphrase an idea once expressed by Albert Einstein, we could put it this way: “Strive not to succeed, but to make your life meaningful”.
[1] Pearse, Susan M. On collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in European Traditio. Published 1999 by Routledge.
