Andrejs Ko (Andrejs Dinvalds) was born in Riga, Latvia in 1970. Having finished the Janis Rozentāls Riga Art Secondary School in 1988, he went on to study at the Latvian Academy of Art, graduating from the Department of Environment Design in 1994. From 2009 he lives and works in the UK.
While still a student he took part in many group exhibitions in Latvia, Russia, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Israel, USA, Canada and other states. He has had one-man show in Riga: „Closing one eyes” (art gallery ag7, 2008), „Pieces of reconquered space” (art gallery Slazds, 2009), „Xenotopia” (art gallery Mākslas Banka, 2013), „Xenotopia II” (art gallery Mākslas Banka, 2014), „Silence between two thoughts” (art gallery Happy Art Museum, 2018). The artist’s works can be found in private collections in Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Germany, USA, Canada, Australia and elsewhere.
Andrejs Ko creative path includes a diversity of media. He worked for a long time (1999–2008) with one of the leading media companies in the Baltic states as their head artist and responsible for the visual design of several television channels. At the same time he developed his own creative interests in music, video art, 2D/3D animation, photography, interior, furniture and graphic design. Already in the 1980 and 90s Andrejs Ko had also proved himself to be an outstanding painter and currently his talent as an artist manifests itself in painting.
Andrejs Ko works in oils and acrylic on canvas, as well as experimenting in his own technique to create both metaphorical figural compositions and stylised still lifes, landscapes and portraits. Well acquainted with the world’s classics, Jan Vermeer, Claude Monet and Gustav Klimt being some of his inspiring authors, the painter has found his authorities among Latvian artists. The refined sense of tonal colours of Boriss Bērziņš, Imants Vecozols and Ieva Iltnere coincides with his own aesthetic ideals.
The artist has paid special attention in his works to the research and discovery of the manifold properties of materiality. He achieves fragility and depth in texture through careful multi-layered painting. The surface is enriched by a realistically clear and detailed drawing in contrast with the interplay of pronouncedly ornamental and expressively chaotic lines. The result is a painterly polyphony of nuances and rhythms, which creates a space for thought associations and sensations to unravel.
This process lends itself well to a wide range of themes that the artist consistently varies. These include the author’s existential musings on the meaning of human life and a person’s role in society, the possibility of spiritual growth and the conflict with existing reality. A large number of works are dedicated to the question of the relationships between the sexes and the breadth of their characteristic emotions and feelings. The artist speaks of love and inner contradictions, happiness and suffering, loneliness and the desire to be understood.