The exhibition Decoratively beyond is a conceptual and visual response of the decorative arts from the Zuzāns collection to the exhibition Unframed: Leis, Tabaka, Rožanskaitė. It offers an opportunity to observe how, in various ways, it was and still is possible to go beyond the conventional in decorative arts.

The question of frames and boundaries blends visually and thematically, looking at different ways of going beyond – formally, in relation to material and medium, ideologically, and in the form of the exhibition itself. At the same time, some work can also raise the question of where and how going beyond happens.

Exhibited industrially produced objects and original works have been created by artists from Latvia and neighboring countries from the Soviet era to the present day. Specific periods or works can be placed in the exposition context for some of the artists, but it is the creative norm for others. Each work is a witness to its era and simultaneously reveals ways of adapting to the existing present or going beyond the conventional.

The Soviet era, with its restrictions on artistic expression, forced creative personalities to look for ways in which the creative spirit could express itself or at least survive, leaving the painful subject. This has left its imprint on all forms of art ever since. The works on display reveal a going “beyond” through defiance, stylisation-abstraction, perfection, and touching on the theme – beyond what is tangibly visible.

The works of the three artists in Unframed open up new interpretative horizons for each other and, at the same time, for the works of decorative and applied art in the Zuzāns collection, allowing them to be seen from the point of view of otherness in the overall picture of “tangible art”.

Applied art is always a game with space, color, compositional elements, scale, and materiality. It involves the interplay of works with one another, which opens new possibilities for the visual perception of decorative objects.