ART WARSAW VILLA RÓŻ
Artists: Jānis Dzirnieks (LV) and Uģis Albiņš (LV)
21.06.2026. - 24.05.2026.

VILLA RÓŻ is the latest edition of the international art fair organized by Art Warsaw, taking place in the 19th-century palace at Aleja Róż 1 in Warsaw.

Maintaining an intimate scale and a strong focus on artistic quality, we will host 56 contemporary art galleries. The initiative expands on the successful model of earlier Art Warsaw projects such as Art Warsaw Miodowa 2025 and NADA Villa Warsaw 2024 and 2025, all achieving exceptional attendance and receiving widespread acclaim across the press and social media.

Art Warsaw showcases leading galleries from Poland and Central and Eastern Europe, and couples them with a thoughtful selection of galleries from around the world. The fair serves as a platform for artistic voices that have for years operated outside the dominant Western-centric market, and are now drawing rising attention from collectors, curators, and institutions.

Jānis Dzirnieks’ Promoted Stories series consists of wall-based works that originate from screenshots captured within the near bottomless flow of online pop-ups, banners and intrusive advertisements commonly found on torrent platforms, streaming sites and internet forums. Emerging from the digital margins of the web, these fragmented images exist in a strange dissonance with reality, exposing the aggressive mechanics of attention economies and the invisible systems through which online profit is generated.

The artist subsequently manipulates these source images in collaboration with algorithms that distort areas containing the least amount of visual information, producing digital drips, glitches, abstract colour fields and grotesquely recognisable figurative fragments. The resulting compositions oscillate between digital decay and painterly abstraction.

To create the works, Dzirnieks uses polystyrene - a lightweight industrial material composed largely of air, often sourced from streets, dumpsters and construction sites. The manipulated images are printed directly onto the material and then physically altered through heat and chemical substances, creating ulcer-like surface ruptures and deformations. Layers of high-gloss resin are applied and cured while interacting with gravity, resulting in frozen drips and a perpetually wet appearance.

Jānis Dzirnieks (1992) work pierces the facade of technological efficiency, revealing the disturbing and often threatening forms that arise from our relentless drive for optimization. By reworking industrial waste into thought-provoking installations, Dzirnieks encourages awareness of the ecological and social consequences of progress. Solo exhibitions: “Healthy Friends”, Contemporary Art Centre Kim?, Tiled River, Gallery 427, Riga; Flat Tire, Robert Fruinstraat 56, Rotterdam; Waiting for the Next Minute, Contemporary Art Centre Kim?, Riga; and Sharp Horizon, Nemo, Eckernforde. Duo exhibitions: Snowlake Blockbuster with Alice Anna Dzirniec, Extra City, Antwerp. Group exhibitions: Soap Opera, City Surfer Office, Prague; Agents of Perception, KAI Art Centre, Tallinn; Midnight Sunburn, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam and elsewhere. Dzirnieks is the winner of the Kim? Center for Contemporary Art Residency Award 2024 and went on to reside at ISCP, New York.

Uģis Albiņš’ artistic practice explores the relationship between technological limitation, material logic and sculptural form. Working across installation, object-making and digitally assisted processes, the artist examines how contemporary systems, from industrial standards and technical restrictions to production methods and spatial conditions, shape the possibilities of both form and perception.

Central to his practice is the development of self-defined concepts such as “unusual standards,”“installation compromises,” and “site-specific detail aggregation.” Albiņš approaches sculpture as a process of problem construction and problem solving, beginning with abstract propositions or functional paradoxes: a figure that can stand only because of the corner supporting it; a linear mechanism with three stops and no possibility of return; a structure designed to hold part of itself. These speculative scenarios evolve through sketches, 3D-printed prototypes and material experimentation before becoming large-scale works.

His practice combines industrial fabrication techniques, including custom-built 3D printers and CNC-machined aluminium and wood, with manual intervention and improvisation. Chance, environmental influence and material unpredictability remain essential components within the process, often transforming the works beyond their original intention.

Uģis Albiņš (1988) graduated from the Visual Communication Department of the Art Academy of Latvia, obtaining a bachelor's and master's degree. Albiņš has so far held five solo exhibitions and participated in several group exhibitions in Latvia and abroad (France, Belgium, Portugal, Estonia, Lithuania). As part of his artistic practice, Albiņš has created several 3D printing devices and built CNC machines, with which he has created several works of art, from aluminum or wood and various materials, combining these techniques with handwork. Recent group exhibitions: META MORPHOSIS, Kortrijk (2025), STRONG PLANS RIXC (2025), Encrypt The Optimised Selection SODAS 2123 (2025), SAVVAĻA (2024), “Black Market”, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (2022); “Syncronicities”, Vagonu hall, Riga (2022); “Feet of Clay”, MABOCA 2, Madona (2022); “Low Moon”, gallery “Low” (2020). Recent solo exhibitions: “Salt on my Asphalt 2.2.” gallery “427” (2022); “Compromise”, art space “You Already Know Where” (2020).