Programme 2023
20:00-22:00
The gallery will host a musical performance by Anton Zolo and a meeting with the artist of the exhibition
Marija Brusokaitė. Exhibition How to hide within time
The exhibition is composed of three major parts: animation sets Ciao, Sweetie (2021), Falling Apart at the Seams (2023), and a sequence of silkscreen prints from a project Nolens Volens (2019).
Willy-nilly from Latin, these prints appear here as quite ironic, since it’s the most recent project I have executed using printmaking techniques. Crudely forged photo collages, over-exposed migraine auras, and distinctive grimy texture, which has emerged by neglecting halftones as I reduced the image to its essence. Motifs of nature and the city, routes of walking in circles, glimpses of beloved Vilnius. Pain chained me to this process, so I tied the series to pain until it left my head and made a nest elsewhere.
Feverish research executed using solely a pencil on a tracing paper led to a collection of numerous sets of frames and their variants. One of these sets is exhibited here as well, with an intention to convey trial and error pulsating throughout the process of making. A creeping sense of threat is an omnipresent phenomenon linking my works. Time thins out, days spent in this process produce barely a moment, and it gets increasingly hard to get out. I hide myself in time spent drawing, the pictures come alive and their raving brings out the fragility of peace. Any system is shattered and replaced as soon as it is crystalized, next frame is directed by pure chance. ‘All shall pass’ – remains the sole rule with a condition that one might leave only after bearing until the end. 5 Malūnai gallery space adopts my bearing to be looped, stared at, made out in tremble or in loss of time.
Akademija. Vilnius Academy of Arts galerry
(Latako g. 2 / Pilies g. 44)
Saulė Matulevičiūtė. Exhibition Image of fashion. Haute couture stamp in visual art. Part I
The illustrations presented in the exhibition are technologically and conceptually more appropriately described as fashion prints. The works are inspired by experienced historical sources: art museums and galleries in the northern Italian regions, nineteenth-century magazine microfilms at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in Milan, issues of the French magazine La Mode Illustrée found in the Milan Fashion Library, and personal photographs taken during cultural trips.
Alongside the fashion prints, the exhibition also introduces the sources that inspired them and the related life narratives experienced during artistic research.
Artifex. Vilnius Academy of Arts gallery
(Gaono g. 1)
Žygimantas Augustinas. Exhibition From Calm to Panic.
The changes of the last few years are trying to accustom people’s psyches to big fluctuations. Like an ocean, people’s moods, which ripple and resonate, create disruptive phenomena or mobilize society to fight back and develop resilience. Sirens and beacons, devices designed to signal danger, are becoming relevant again in this context.
Sirens are also ancient Greek mythological creatures, half-woman and half-bird, which, according to Homer, lure sailors. The howler monkeys are a species of monkey (Alouatta) that is capable of a very loud howl, the male’s howl being used mainly to attract females or to ward off competitors.
The project aims to draw attention to alarm devices, ancient Greek mythical creatures, and the exploration of the properties of sound. For example, howler monkeys are able to make such loud noises because of the extremely large polyhedral bone that acts as a resonator. The fascinating devices developed by engineers, the creatures that can seduce, and the fetishization of sound timbre and its reproduction devices come together in the project. The aim is to highlight the importance of being prepared for danger, together with the need for a reassuring refuge.
In the exhibition, you will see the modern electronic Sonnenburg siren, which would alert you to an air raid in time of war, but which will play the lyre as if it were seducing Odysseus. You will also find smaller sirens that have a gentle look and are capable of making a very nasty sound, as well as an ancient Greek siren with blackened hands. There will be an occasional howl, and paintings, drawings, and cozily lit tube amplifiers will remind you of a perhaps peaceful past. A (non-lethal) sonic weapon turned on to disperse illegal gatherings will give you a chance to explore the enigmatic power of vibrations. The exhibition and its exhibits will be calm but may cause panic if the imagination or a switch is turned on.
(Totorių g. 5-5)
20:00
Exhibition tour with an artist Jurga Barilaitė
Jurga Barilaitė. Exhibition Bottom.
The Bottom is the third part of Jurga Barilaitė’s ongoing project Dreams of the Living and Delusions of the Dead. In this project, the artist explores different ways of resistance or liberation from radical ideologies of power. By looking for links between the body, language, and abstract symbolism, Barilaitė creates alternative strategies of resistance, revealing the contradictions of struggle and at the same time seeking reconciliation with fate. In 2019, Jurga Barilaitė presented the first part of the project entitled Bones and Sediments at Artifex Gallery, while in 2021, the second part Lines and Folds was presented at Atletika Gallery.
Reflecting on the political and social tensions in the world in recent years, Jurga Barilaitė presents an exhibition exploring possible survival strategies. The bottom in the exhibition not only symbolizes the absolute end but also becomes a starting point, where the deposited sludge reflects the continuity of life and reminds us of the constant change. The process of decomposition in the sludge and the disappearance of light in the darkest matter inspires the artist to look for a neutral perspective on the negative political changes on a global level. Faced with problems that encompass the whole of humanity, Jurga Barilaitė discovers their solutions in dreams and, with the help of artificial intelligence, constructs an “instruction manual” for the salvation of humanity.
Jurga Barilaitė (b. 1972) is an interdisciplinary artist, painter, and creator of assemblages, texts, performances, and video art. Her work is based on a critical approach to the tradition of painting and its discourse, reflections on the identity of the artist and the nature of creativity, as well as the highlighting of the feminist construct. Barilaitė’s ideas are often based on autobiographical details, scientific theories, and images from art history or pop culture. Since graduating from the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 1996, she has been working on interdisciplinary projects and actively participating in exhibitions. Since 1998, Jurga Barilaitė has been a member of the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association.
(T. Vrublevskio g. 6-2)
Šarūnas Baltrukonis. Exhibition Nexus.
Nexus is the first personal exhibition of the young generation painter Šarūnas Baltrukonis. It presents the artists’ paintings and objects created in recent years, which creatively reflect our changed relationship with technology and the technological.
The motifs in Baltrukonis’ canvases, having lost their natural “realism” or “digitality”, enter into a qualitatively new relationship that can be understood through mutual interaction. By combining motifs that are opposite in nature and searching for their aesthetic balance, the artist uses the rough, sharp, smooth, or slippery surfaces of the planes as certain media containing different information about the bodies made of them. The surfaces of the works become a specific membrane, structuring the arrangement of motifs in the picture and creating their continuous interaction on both sides of the boundaries of the spaces of reality and virtuality.
21:30
Exhibition tour with an artist Kristina Norvilaitė
Kristina Norvilaitė. Exhibition Assemblages and Landscapes.
The author will present her works in two techniques: assemblage and landscape. According to the author, these two different ways of creation allow one to broaden their skills, thinking, juggle meanings, and make jokes. “I don’t commit, I put together compositions, I apply colours, moods. Sometimes it takes up to ten years to put together an assemblage. Because you have to wait for a certain detail or object that will complement the existing composition. And landscapes are always in my creative field when I can’t travel for a long time,” says the artist.
Jelena Škulis. Exhibition Pause. By the River of War
The main installation of the exhibition is a 10-meter-long work made on a computerized threading loom but woven by hand. Each thread of the installation is threaded by hand. The content of the main work in the exhibition Pause. By the River of War is a sequence of repeated words with pauses. J. Škulis heard these words in an interview with a girl from Ukraine. She described her current life with the words “war” and “tears”, and that she lives “in waiting.” These words, originally spoken in Ukrainian, were arranged by the artist in various sequences on a slow physical timeline, paused or almost legible.
Open 24/7
An open-air sculpture garden at the MO Museum awaits you at any time of the day. The companionship by the works of the well-known Lithuanian sculptors.
Artists: Ksenija Jaroševaitė, Vincas Kisarauskas, Vladas Urbanavičius, Petras Mazūras, Donatas Jankauskas-Duonis, Mindaugas Navakas.
Exhibition Glows of the visual art biennial Laconica
Authors of the exhibition: Danas Aleksa, Ramūnas Alminas, Henrikas Čerapas, Sigita Ūla Gečaitė, Rūta Katiliūtė, Sybille Pattscheck, Karolis Vaivada, Tess Williams, Julie Wolfe, and Darius Žiūra.
Curator of the exhibition: Agnė Jonkutė.
The idea for the exhibition Glows came from a rethinking of the strict black/white monochrome of the 2021 biennial exhibitions, which led to the choice of the principle of contrast and a reflection on the meaning of colorfulness in the language of minimalist art. As the British art historian John Gage has observed, color is first and foremost a code for communication, however difficult it may be to agree on its definitions: “We have learned to classify colors according to their hue, but they also have other important qualities, such as purity, lightness or darkness, mattness or glossiness, warmth or coolness. One of the puzzles of pre-modern illuminator workshops is how to interpret the many notes on the color that survive in the margins of manuscripts and represent a code of communication between the workshop artisan and the painter.”