In late August, a solo exhibition of paintings by Ukrainian-Israeli artist Evgeny Merman opened at the Grata JJ and MuseumLV in Riga. The museum is a well-established cultural center and art gallery that organizes showings of local and international artists.

The traveling exhibition, which ran until October 15, had previously been on display in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Vilnius, Lithuania. It includes large-scale paintings, inspired by an illustrated geographical atlas, that was published in several editions at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Leipzig, Germany. Evgeny Merman approached the atlas through the eyes of a painter, resulting in a very colorful series of paintings. Ilan Wizgan curated the exhibition, and local art experts noted that it called attention to the Israeli visual art scene.

Israeli Ambassador to Latvia, Sharon Rappaport Palgi, was present at the opening of the exhibition, and delivered congratulatory remarks.

Evgeny Merman is a painter and multimedia artist. He was born in Ukraine, and began his art education at the Kyiv Art School and the Kyiv Academia of Fine Art. He currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. A neo-expressionist, Merman captures moments of life, people, stories and fragments of visual information in his oil paintings. He transforms images from the real world as they pass through him, becoming his silent testimony.