Ojars Feldbergs‘ lifelong dream - Pedvale Art Park - a threatened idyll
by Gisela Weimann
portfolio special mention call 'Urbanautica Institute Awards 2024', 2024
Category: Representations of Space, Architecture, and Conflicts
In northwestern Latvia, in Courland (Kurzeme), on the left bank of the Abava River, next to the town of Sabile, lies Pedvale. After Latvia's independence was restored in 1991, sculptor Ojars Arvids Feldbergs acquired and fixed the Firckspedvale and Brinkenpedvale mansions with the surroundig land and began developing his open-air art museum. One of his central concerns is to restore and preserve the history of this unsual area and its buildings. Since September 2018 Pedvale Art Park is a registered Monument and invites visitors as well as international artists for one month-long work and research stays.
The territory of the art park covers an area of almost 100 hectares of varied landscape - meadows, bushes, steep slopes, deep valleys, springs, streams and a winding river - with numerous large stone sculptures, mainly by Feldbergs himself, carefully placed around the historic manor houses, on meadows, valleys and up the hills. It presents an impressive documentation of the artist‘s work, to which new sculptures and installations are continuously being added.
The grass and the lushly blooming dandelions, however, are in constant conflict with the artworks. The 100 hectars of uneven ground around the sculptures must be constantly mowed so that they remain visible.
The Pedvale Art Park is a unique place where visitors can observe and experience the interplay of art and nature.
Hiking trails: 1 - 5 kilometers long; walking time: 1 - 4 hours.
Review by URBANAUTICA
In her recent project at the Pedvale Art Park in northwestern Latvia, the multimedia German artist Gisela Weimann once again demonstrates her unique stance, challenging individualistic conceptions of art by entering into a dialogue with the land, its history, and the artists who have shaped it. Weimann transcends the notion of art as an isolated, commodified object. Instead, she foregrounds art as a process: open-ended, interpretive, and inherently generous. Her practice embraces a social dimension, a commitment to contexts that destabilizes the boundaries between artist, audience, and environment.Pedvale, with its sprawling 100 hectares of meadows, valleys, and the sculptures of Ojars Arvids Feldbergs, becomes fertile ground for this approach. The very landscape demands negotiation: the constant struggle between nature’s exuberance—grass and blooming dandelions—and the visibility of the artworks reveals a silent tension at the heart of the park. Weimann highlights how the necessity of mowing the meadows to keep Feldbergs’ vision visible is itself an ongoing, precarious human intervention. Through her lens, Pedvale emerges not just as an exhibition space but as a living organism where art and environment are in perpetual conversation—and sometimes confrontation.
Weimann’s situational approach recalls Joseph Beuys’ ideas of social sculpture and localized action, where the artist’s mere presence can become an act of political engagement. Her earlier collaborations, such as with Angelo Riocci (see our previous article here), have already manifested her commitment to embedding herself in specific territories and communities. At Pedvale, her presence becomes a form of rootedness; it is in “being there” rather than “producing for” that Weimann’s political gesture lies, echoing a situationalism where the act of staying, observing, and participating is as significant as any material outcome.
Weimann’s photographs from Pedvale exemplify her almost ascetic aesthetic. They are visual notes devoid of arrogance or manipulation—documents that let the landscape and sculptures speak for themselves. Her images present Feldbergs’ stone monoliths as if each carved stone were a gaze, inviting reflection on a deeper existential confrontation: How much of our existence is a struggle with nature—or with our own nature?
Ultimately, Weimann’s project at Pedvale is a meditation on the fragility of human vision in the face of time, growth, and decay. By choosing a site where art is inseparable from the land, she foregrounds the tensions that define our relationship with the natural world and the labor required to sustain meaning within it. In doing so, she elevates Feldbergs’ Pedvale Art Park from a static collection of objects to a dynamic, living space of reflection—one where art, nature, and human intervention remain in delicate, necessary balance.
also from Urbanautica Institute Awards 2024