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| Three Thursdays from the Spring and Summer Eglė Juocevičiūtė, Art Critic, Curator Projects by Tim Kliukoit, Karolis Vaivada and Rūta Songailaitė in the Thursday Review room at the gallery Vartai, Vilnius | |
| On 17 November, 2011, when the first Thursday Review took place at gallery Vartai in Vilnius it was not at all clear for the scouts, the gallery and the artists what kind of project they were getting involved in. The idea is simple enough, but also quite intensive – a review, open to the public, takes place in the gallery every Thursday, during which new works of one artist are presented, and, through conversation, the genre, development, uniqueness and potential of the author’s artwork is analyzed. The constructive one-hour meetings aim to make art easier to understand and more familiar. A week before a review, a text written by the scout presenting and helping to interpret the artist appears in the cultural weekly ‘Literatūra ir menas’. More than a year since the launch of the project and after nearly 50 events, the Thursday Reviews have clearly become a quite flexible platform for young artists and new projects. The Thursday project room can acquire very different shapes, depending on the different aims of the artists. For those showing their works in a commercial gallery for the first time, it can offer a clean and tidy white or black cube to present a finished project. And for those who feel constrained by the white cube of a gallery, it can become an experimental interactive space or an event of institutional critique and relational aesthetics. Bearing in mind that the project was intended to work mostly as a kind of contemporary art education for established and beginner Lithuanian collectors, we can conclude so far that it didn’t really create a miracle and didn’t stir the Lithuanian art market. How-ever, the project created a noteworthy latest visual art database, not only of images, but also of interpretations, that are now used by Vartai and other institutions working with contemporary art. Maybe it will soon become indispensable for the collectors who so far have been looking around timidly. In the April-May 2012 issue of Studija I wrote about three artists presented in the Thursday Review during the first months of 2012: Jurgita Žvinklytė, Justė Venclovaitė and Arnas Anskaitis. This time I also picked up three Thursday artists who in my opinion are also deserving of more attention: Tim Kliukoit, Karolis Vaivada and Rūta Songailaitė. While thinking about what it is exactly in their works that grabs my attention again and again, I realized that even though their degrees don‘t say “sculpture“, they make objects and object installations which nowadays are, as a matter of fact, quite rare in Lithuanian art. Coming from painting, photography and video, they bring different experiences and create alternatives for the sculptural understanding of objects. | |
 Tim Kliukoit. Amber glasses. Object. Glases, mirror elements. 2012 Publicity photo Courtesy of the artist | |
| Their works could be seen again in Vartai from 10 until 17 January, 2013, in the exhibition 27 Thursdays, showing together all the best artists that had been presented at the Thursday Review since April. During the opening ceremony Rūta Songailaitė was awarded the New Horizon prize, which entitles her to have one of her works bought by the Vartai gallery. Tim Kliukoit Contemporary art in Lithuania more often tends to be, let’s say, Scandinavian: clean and minimal, but poetic and picturesque visual language is also most warmly greeted in the exhibition halls and among the professional media. It doesn’t mean that huge scale, abundance and anti-aesthetics are totally rejected, but one has to get accustomed to this kind of art; critics and curators, in a way, have to reconcile themselves to these kinds of expressions and accept them as the unique style of the artist. We had a conversation about national visual habits with Tim Kliukoit (born 1984) when, on seeing his works for the first time, I confessed that they make me feel uncomfortable. The objects themselves are picturesque, poetic and accurate enough, so looking at them one by one, the eye looking for a Lithuanian standard doesn‘t get scared. On the other hand, after seeing many objects their size begins to feel strange – they all could perfectly be held in one hand. Tim calls this size “chamber” and says he started to work with it intentionally after getting to know the visual contemporary art language of the Netherlands, and realized that “small” art suits small countries perfectly. But even more than the regular size of the objects, the general aspect of their exposition makes me confused. The structure of the exposition is not based on visual narrative – there’s no beginning, development, climax and ending, as objects of similar size are put on the walls at similar distances, just at different heights. Tim’s expositions intentionally have no intriguing beginning, dramatic climax and moralistic ending because his aim is rather to restore unrelated moments, miracles of everyday life, than to narrate some consistent story. These miracles of everyday life are those moments when, because of the illumination, company or special state of mind, things that we know very well become strange and fresh for a second. These short moments of enlightenment formally are not linked to each other, they appear unexpectedly and disappear suddenly, without any introduction and conclusion, and the only link is you, experiencing them. Literal illustrations of these moments are Tim’s objects Untitled (Red Cloth) (2011) and Untitled (The Flying Stick) (2011), in which he restores frozen fragments of hovering and flying. A red cloth of satin floating in the air as if without holder (the holder is covered with the cloth) and a stick resting on sheets of transparent glass are denying physics as the undeniable order of the world and suggest what simple miraculous moments would look like. Attention to the tactile senses of a viewer is one of the instruments creating convincing restorations of moments of enlightenment. Tim plays with visual tactility, using various surfaces and making us want to touch his pieces which we are not allowed to touch because of their position as pieces of visual art. This attention to visual tactility comes from Tim’s background as a painter – in 2010 he graduated from monumental painting at Vilnius Academy of Arts. However, in recent years Tim discovered himself to be an object maker and in 2012 transferred his Master’s studies to the sculpture department. Tim’s painterly instincts come into play when he combines materials in his objects: natural and dyed wood, artificial leather, satin, glass, fur, metal and etc. These objects are supposed to be perceived with some organ in between our eyes and hands. The object installation The Best Old Games (2011) talks about this literally – one part of it is a painting in which we see a person seated at the table and working with some kind of cavity elongated between his/her face and hands. The other part of this “wall installation” is an object formed from the corner keys that are used in a stretcher frame for tightening canvas and, in this case, playing with the length of the cavity between the eyes and hands. In a less direct way, the objects Sugar and Salt (2011) and Pocket (2011) are also talking about something similar. The first one is a metal drawer filled with a mix, of sugar and salt. It has a trowel planted into the mix inviting and tempting the viewer to dig in while thinking about banal, though sharp, metaphorical meanings of sugar and salt. The work Pocket is cut from a black artificial leather jacket and stretched on a frame, alluring with the mysterious space inside it that never can be seen and can only be touched. These objects imply a forbidden (“one must not touch a piece of art“) hand movement of digging in or shoving in. Meanwhile in Untitled (Sandpaper), a sheet of sandpaper with a prick mark almost in the middle of it is framed and covered by glass. So even if it provokes us to follow the prick mark and touch the rough surface of sandpaper, the shiny glass cover makes the ban on touching artworks very visual. “Pulling away” from the wall is also important to Tim. The objects are hung on the wall and even though some of them are stretched on a frame or are framed, they remain objects and penetrate the space in front of them, more or less. This “stepping off” the wall is addressed in Step (2011), in which a narrow image of man’s legs stepping off a step can be seen through a smooth and narrow block of plexiglas. The sides of the block are opaque, so you can see the “step” only by standing right in front of the object, as if looking at a varnished oil painting or some other “one viewpoint” artwork type. | |
 Rūta Songalaitė. Įžanga / Intro. Installation. 2012 | |
| Tim’s piece A few New Toys (2011) won second prize (the first was not awarded) in an exhibition-competition “New Vanguard” Object organized in April, 2012, by the gallery AV17 in Vilnius. The miniature aluminium figurines of French courtiers of the 18th century meant for collecting and painting that Tim found in a flea market amused him with an idea about toys for adults. Getting a bit carried away, Tim tried soldering the miniatures two by two and they began connecting into forms of adults being naughty. Looking at these playful figurines one can really indulge in fantasy on the image of the colossal depravity of the French court just before the Revolution. Playing with a strong cultural context is not often met in other pieces by Tim, so A Few New Toys adds some spice to his metaphorically playful creation. After the successful project in Vartai in May, Tim was invited to contribute to the exhibition Lithuanian Art 2012: 18 Exhibitions: Sparrows curated by Valentinas Klimašauskas at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius. In October, 2012, Tim had a collaborative exhibition with photography artist Paul Paper at the project space Malonioji 6 in Vilnius. Karolis Vaivada The other painter also making object installations is Karolis Vaivada (born 1987). Our sight is again the main target in Karolis’ works, but this time the tools are not forms and surfaces, but light – the very reason we are able to see. According to Karolis, while studying painting at the Vilnius Academy of Arts he found himself very interested in separating the main components of an image. Coming from painting, he moved towards colour, but after a closer examination of the colour theory he decided to go for white light – the concentration of all the colours. During the final year of his bachelor studies Karolis began experimenting with wall objects containing fluorescent or daylight lamps. At first sight, looking at Karolis’ objects you could be reminded of the classical minimalist objects of Dan Flavin and James Turell. But not having the technical possibilities that were adored by the minimalists, Karolis had to make use of “Lithuanian” chamber size, hand-made and low-tech aesthetics. This is the reason why the experience of Karolis’ works is more intimate and cosier than that of classic minimalism. However, after a short time Karolis began to start thinking that there should be a better way to talk about light than using the artificial, simulated light of lamps. In search of something true, he chose the more complicated and, at a first glance, maybe less spectacular way – he began to work with reflections of natural daylight. After looking at these works long enough, the research of natural daylight reflections becomes a part of both the physical and the artistic world. The results of dispersing and concentrating light are easily explained in terms of physics, but for the eye of an art lover they certainly look miraculous and metaphysical. While thinking about fine arts in its conventional terms, it is really only sculpture that deals with real light and shadow, and changes because of the changing light conditions. So Karolis is abandoning the imitation of light in painting and playing with his paintings using the terms of sculpture. In his Master’s degree final work Karolis uses two kinds of reflective surfaces – mirrors and sheets of plexiglas smoothly covered with silver spray paint. They are oriented in accordance with the specific track of daylight in the room. The construction of mirrors in Spot of Light (2012) is not used for a clear reflection of the surroundings, but for reflecting and concentrating dispersed day-light into one sharp ray which ends with a spot on the wall. Meanwhile the plexiglas covered with silver spray paint is meant for looking at directly. This surface reflects only main areas of light and darkness of the surroundings; it reflects not the things but the space. These can be looked at as paintings that change depending on where the viewer stands. The paintings are abstract reflections and the surface is meant for creating an illusion of depth. For example, in the Shining Darkness (2012) installation the plate hanging on the wall seems to be dark, but on the plate lying on the floor it is reflected as a source of bright light somewhere deep in-side the painting. In Decomposed Planes (2012) Karolis is again playing with the collaboration between vertical and horizontal plates, but this time they are pushed together in a particular way so that the composition of bright and dark reflections on the vertical plate is more complex. In Plane That Envelops (2012), the silver plexiglas plate is bent in a half circle and this simple move makes it interactive. In different moments of approaching it you can see only the dispersed reflection of a gallery room, then the normal reflection of yourself, the reflection begins to stretch, and then, when you reach the “painting“ it turns your reflection upside down. The construction of metal sticks keeping the plate bent seems at the same time very severely technical and cossily hand-made. Even if the complicated looking construction is a result of still learning and experimenting, it makes the bent plate so “endeavoured for” and therefore condensed. It somehow makes you not only have fun but also to stop for a while and clearly perceive the physical space of a gallery, and metaphysical space of the reflection you are in. The proportion of Karolis directing the reflections and our experience is hard to measure. He only makes reflection happen in a more or less particular way and then it changes according to the point of standing of a viewer, time of day, weather conditions, the colour of the room and position of a window. However, the experience, which could be called that of a metaphysical kind, begins with the particular reflective and dispersive greyness, that connects quickly in our head with the aesthetics of the quest for outer space of the 1960s. These aesthetics come together with the particular romanticism of the cosmos and everything that’s beyond, an attempt to reach the essence hiding behind everything mundane and material. Rūta Songailaitė A pine forest on a summer’s day. Tall grass rustling quite loudly. Pine trees are lightly swaying and the birds are singing. In the distance one sees a person coming into the picture from the left corner. The person is wearing something orange. Person approaches a pine tree just a bit to the right of the picture centre and begins to climb up. Climbs slowly for quite a long time, it‘s a pine, not an apple tree. After reaching the second third of the pine tree, person stops. The pines begin to sway a little more intensely. The person sits in the tree for a while and then starts to move as if exercising arms and legs. Starts to descend. After reaching halfway, the person falls down, with branches crackling, and disappears in the grass. Stands up, cleans the clothes and retreats into the forest to the right of the picture. The depicted video performance of Rūta Songailaitė (born 1989) is called I Lost My Memory the Day I Was Born (5:58, 2011). After watching it one leaves the dark room in silence, even though with a friend. There’s nothing to say, because whatever you could say would ruin it. The sudden comparison with Bas Jan Ader and his Broken Fall (Organic) helps to perceive the special mood of I Lost.... It‘s not as desperate and hopeless, it has this inner peace and a kind of happy end. Maybe it’s because Rūta was younger when doing this video performance than Bas Jan Ader doing his, or maybe it’s just the colours that make the difference. Anyhow, Bas Jan Ader now seems more like a pessimist looking for failure, meanwhile Rūta appears as an optimistic failure. This falling down is a start for her, it is through this kind of initiation ritual that she is trying to get her lost memory back. There are not that many rational tools available for this kind of purpose, one has to trust one’s intuition. This intuition is supposed to be nurtured by experience and with knowledge so that it can grow into some kind of ingeniousness. One can find a lot of showing off knowledge crudely covered with sincerity in contemporary art, but there are very few really ingenious things. A constant ecology of one’s thoughts, meanings and actions is needed there. It seems to me that Rūta is one of those few naturally ingenious artists. Though she graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts with a media degree in 2012, she has been part of the young art scene since 2010. She is known as an independent thinker. One could divide her work according to the forms her ideas are taking. As I began my text describing her video performance, this could be the first group. Together with I Lost... there is also Sea Here (4:44, 2010), featuring a gloomy Lithuanian beach and Rūta digging holes in the sand with her hands. She’s digging till she reaches “the essence“ – water, then she moves a little bit further towards the sea, sitting in the previous pit, digging a new one. The second group would be the installations: Apskritai (‘Generally’, but also ‘Roundly’) (2011) and her diploma work Įžanga/Intro (2012). Apskritai is a site-specific installation, designed for a classroom of the academy. On the upper corner of the board wall she glued round posters – optic tricks which are said to help you train yourself to see people’s auras. By always seeing the posters in their peripheral vision when looking at the professor, students are supposed to be able to see the professor’s aura, clearer with each day. Imagine if this would work for every student – it would take away a little of the oppressiveness of the education system by giving students some additional and irrefutable information about the professor. Įžanga/Intro was a biggish diamond-shaped glass sheet hanging in a dark room, illuminated with a light diode fixed to the very tip of the “diamond“. The shining diamond was a sign of purity, silence and beginning for Rūta, graduating from the academy and starting again from point zero. I would describe the third group as framed wall objects. These were shown in Vartai – a photography project Untitled (2010) and an object made especially for a Thursday Review and named A Tree (2012). Untitled is a photographic experiment. Rūta took photographs of her own academic drawings from art school years and printed them on some photographic paper she found in her grandmother’s basement. The drawings were of a plaster lion head relief, a stuffed raven and rabbit, and a plaster bust of a boy. Rūta was interested in how, during the process of academic drawing, something that is supposed to be seen as a living creature really begins to seem live to the person drawing. He/she spends plenty of hours with the drawings and knows every line and curve, and in the end gives them eyes so that the drawings can look at you. So taking photos of these drawings was like making portraits of them. Printing the photos added even more life to them, because the photo paper was old and the slight damage to it had its word on how the photos should look like. Framed one by one, like butterflies in a natural history museum, the photos definitely look like creatures that once lived. A Tree is a structure made of the archetypical geometric symbols which can be found in the majority of world cultures. It’s an embroidery of a tree of life pattern forming a circle, framed in a rectangular frame and hung on the wall on a painted triangle. Looking for archetypical symbols of the whole world, for some profound and wise imagery, she is now looking for a pure form of the life she is supposed to live now, and once again she is looking for the memory she lost the day she was born. | |
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