Both sides of the Void

Both sides of the Void (EN, DE)

2012-02-01

All that God turns away from becomes human, all that man abandons becomes perfect.

Curator Ignas Kazakevičius

Berlin’s Werkstattgalerie presents the Lithuanian artists’ project Both sides of the Void. The exhibition in Germany features Agnė Jonkutė’s paintings, Bronė Neverdauskienė and Monika Žaltauskaitė-Grašienė’s installation, and Remigijus Treigys’s photographs. Although the exhibition is comprised of multiple objects, paintings, and photographs, I would call the territory occupied by each artist simply a work. Three gallery halls – three works, three versions of the void, encompassing the two possibilities of understanding the latter – as both physical and implied. The void as ideas of things. As a human being. As a social vacuum. As a possibility of a new start. The void as relations. The artists talk about these states by using or transforming the medium of photography. In his photographs of the transitions between culture and nature, Remigijus Treigys captures the splinters and debris of time that fill the void extending between them. Agnė Jonkutė transfers to the canvas what the lens of a camera made in the interwar period, directed at a reinforced concrete house wall or a washed-off curtain, has captured, while Bronė Neverdauskienė and Monika Žaltauskaitė-Grašienė use human skin as his own history and turn it into different woven patterns with the help of computer jacquard weaving, and build objects from these patterns.

The invisible side

According to art critic dr. Agnė Narušytė,  “Any discussion of Remigijus Treigys’ photographs cannot avoid mentioning magic realism. Void in things, buildings and landscapes. It gapes through the orifices in the buildings. Certain things in the photographs are nothing else than signs of emptiness. The void of plains in landscapes. Shadowlike objects emerging in the homogenous greyness of landscapes emphasize the absence of any thing even more. The physical and photographic fog deletes the markings of time. Outlines of social life are still there in certain places: a railway, courtyards, buildings. But social dimension is dissolving here in the same way as the distance of space. Everything plunges into more and more indiscernible darkness, until only a hardly visible horizon remains in the photographs, and the space ripples and thus becomes palpable, but also paradoxically empty – no object can be inserted into this space. The photographer achieves such a degree of darkness, thickness and obscurity that photography escapes the visibility of real space. These are not physical spaces (although specific locations are their basis), but mental ones. Like some Zen Buddhist, Treigys clears them of objects and of the space itself and in the void he seeks enlightenment with the help of darkness. This is where the author is taking the viewer – beyond that visible line of the reality of things, where there is nothing familiar, nothing beautiful or ugly, nothing real or artificial, nothing subjective or objective, really nothing there”.

Emptiness addiction

Agnė Jonkutė says – “I am addicted to the emptiness. Spaces (usually it is architecture) that have some physical influence are exceptionally important to me. My body reacts to such spaces. It is related with a particular state that is aroused by an environment. I like it, I long for it. I respond to it. I strive to spend some time in such spaces, to observe empty space, remember, ingrain them, and later on transfer them to my works. It is more important to transfer the feeling, a state, not a vision, but through a vision. That is why I like O.Pamuk words: “The place where time becomes a space”. What interest me is a relation between human being as an observer and an empty space – physically empty and clean architectural space. When informational noise is cancelled, an observer can behold a beauty of the light that usually is lost in daily routine. I am especially interested in the lights way on the surface, its dissipation, how it slowly disappears and becomes darkness. I would like to investigate the state when nothing happens there is only an observer and silent human environment without decorations, shock, noise, and glamour – a cleaned daily routine. The main objective of the project is to awake an enchantment without an excitement, when an observer will start noticing regular, simple things, and the state will become recognizable just like an old friend”.

Total equality

Installation Total equality examines the sphere of influence of the equality stereotype, and evaluates authors own experience resulting from the collision of the “democratic” values with the reality of life. By interpreting the child’s romper suit, in this work authors seek to reveal the position of the stigmatised in society. The latter appears to “imprison” them in childhood, thus the stigmatised can only submit to acting as a “child among adults”. The combination of the body of an old person and children’s clothing is supposed to draw attention to the fact that the mentioned “imprisonment” of the stigmatised leaves them in need of self-identity, as the individual is cast out of the “normal” world. In other words, the stigmatising labels attached to us circumcise us and make us amorphous like emptiness “imprisoned” in a child’s romper suit.

The installation Total Equality emphasises the human inclination to squeeze their own and others’ lives into clichés. Therefore, the propaganda of universal equality regardless of gender, race, age, religion, sexual orientation or social status, carried out by the media, is fairly ironic, because it does not reflect reality. Led by their nature – the desire to be, to survive, to dominate, people seek to avoid equality at any cost. With this project, authors state that, regardless of racial or national differences, we all bear labels that designate the fate of “decent people”, professional careerists, housewives or losers… According to art critic dr. Laima Kreivytė –  “Each body is a sum of not only present, but also future possibilities. Yet we judge the prospects of these branded bodies by their surface and the labels attached by society. The most superficial, yet the most visible bodily features become a permanent tattoo of identity. We cannot get rid of these inscriptions on our bodies. Total Equality calls the viewers to fill the hollow bodies with the stories of their own and others’ lives”.

Organizers: Cultural Comunication Center (Klaipėda, Lithuania)

Curator: Ignas Kazakevičius

Die beiden Seiten der Leere

Leere als Begrifflichkeit der Dinge. Als Gegenwart des Menschen. Als soziales Vakuum. AlsMöglichkeit des Neubeginns. Leere als Beziehung. Leere als Freiheit…

Am 16. Februar um 19 Uhr fällt in der Berliner „Werkstattgalerie“ der Startschuss zum litauischen Künstlerprojekt „Die beiden Seiten der Leere“. Zur Ausstellung kommen die neuesten Arbeiten der Malerin  Agnė Jonkutė, der Installationskünstler  Bronė Neverdauskienė und Monika Žaltauskaitė–Grašienė sowie des Photographen Remigijus Treigys. Trotz der Vielzahl an Objekten, Bildern, Photographien ist der Raum eines jeden Künstlers als ein Werk zu verstehen. Drei Sphären – drei Werke, drei Versionen der Leere – reflektieren zwei Auffassungen von Leere: als physische und als implizierte. Die Künstler beleuchten die Leerezustände unter Verwendung und  Transformation des Mediums Photographie. Mit seiner immer weiter verfeinerten Technik photographiert Remigijus Treigys seit 15 Jahren die Nahtstellen von Kultur und Natur, hält die Splitter, Bruchstücke, Trümmer des Äthers in der Leere dazwischen fest. Agnė Jonkutė bannt auf Leinwand, was das Objektiv einer Kamera aus der Zwischenkriegszeit von Eisenbetonwänden oder einem verwaschenen Vorhang aufsammelt.  Und Bronė Neverdauskienė und Monika Žaltauskaitė–Grašienė  „verwandeln“ menschliche Geschichte auf Haut mithilfe des Jacquardwebstuhls in gemusterte Webereien und weiter in überraschende Objekte.

Die künstlerischen Taktiken der Autoren enstprechen nach Kurator Ignas Kazakevičius ganz dem Motto der Ausstellung „Alles, wovon Gott sich abwendet ist menschlich, was der Mensch in Ruhe lässt, ist perfekt“.

Veranstalter: KKKC

Ort: Werkstattgalerie, Eisenacher Str. 6, Berlin
Vernissage: 16. 2. 2012, 19:00.
Ausstellung: 16. 2. – 17. 3. 2012