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| CROSSING BOUNDARIES AND THE ROAD TO NEW SHORES Stella Pelše The 12th Vilnius Painting Triennial Vilnius Contemporary Art Centre 14 May - 13 June, 2004 | |
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The Vilnius painting triennials have a long history stretching back to Soviet times (since 1969), and this year visitors had the opportunity to judge the results of the continuation of the tradition and its relevance to today's situation. When considering the overall organisation, we cannot avoid mentioning certain manifestations of provincial self-sufficiency; at the press conference and the opening, the organisers spoke only in Lithuanian, they did not introduce the artists that had arrived and the titles of the works (this can be very important in a conceptually oriented show) were in Lithuanian only. Like it or not, this gives the impression that the event was meant mainly for local consumption. Another first impression was that there was almost nothing surprising or provocative; but there is no point in examining the works' potential to provoke or overstep borders outside a description of the generally accepted background. And that is the great joke - the background of this tradition is not and cannot be homogenous; it differs at the country, artist and viewer levels and the possibility of being surprised is in inverse proportion to the level of one's knowledge of the outside world.
Outline of the concept An image of the colour spectrum was used for the exhibition concept. In a conversation in the exhibition catalogue, the curators Ignas Kazakevičius and Rita Mikučionyte explain that the seven colours have been interpreted as painting's seven rules or truths. They are rather seven themes for discussion - tradition, antipoles, dialogue, technique, form and content, action and ritual as well as labels or brands. In their conversation the curators emphasise that "new forms in their essence no longer belong to painting. They remind us more of improvised bridges that lead us to another (unknown) shore where a new harvest may await us. These bridges are made of both the desire to emulate something else as well as from materials typically associated with painting."1 However the main idea behind the catalogue of the exhibition is to embody a concentrated version of concept of the arrangement. We can see a deliberate "pairing" of works on the principle of stylistic and iconographic connections, obviously to submit to the dictates of the works' spatial dimensions and dependence on the possibilities available in the exhibition hall. The search for "relatives" between Lithuanian and foreign artists could highlight essential moments of influence and parallel development but sometimes it seemed that the result became dependent on superficial external similarities. Thus, for example, what has the quite pop art style work "The Relaxation They Like Best" by Polish artist Monika Solorz in common with "Some of My Tiny Guardian Angels", a meditative abstract by Lithuanian Egle Ridikaite? Is it really enough for there only to be oval barbecues in one case and abstract oval signs in the other? The works were grouped according to quite diverse features - clothing or animal motifs, grotesque figuralism, retrospective academic painting, minimalism and so on. In the end, one was forced to conclude that the most important thing was to prove the equal standing of Lithuanian art with the slogan, "We're no worse than all the others." This would seem to be quite modest for an exhibition concept. The tactics of crossing boundaries or what is painting? Norwegian artist Marianne Skjong said that this is possibly the only specifically painting triennial (elsewhere the boundaries of the types of art are no longer relevant) and this makes us turn once again to the definition of painting. Greek artist Lambros Psyrrakis's mosaic "Variation on the Theme of Joseph Koshut" (2001) is one of the few conceptually based works and offers definitions of painting: "1) An activity or profession that envisages covering surfaces with paint; 2) An activity, art or profession that envisages the depiction of scenes, objects, people etc. with the help of paint." If we assume the boundary sign to be a painted canvas or cardboard, then there really was an ample number of boundary violations: Arvydas Žalpys' "Chair From Three Points of View" could also have been suitable in a sculptural context (a "painting" with planks on the wall, floor and in space), the braided wire landscapes by Algis Griškevičius, "Ethnoetudes" - the drawings by Živana Kostič (Serbia & Montenegro) done by inserting needles into the canvas, Violeta Rudinskaite-Juodzevičiene's dresses that served as the bases of works instead of canvas and were heading in the direction of so-called fibre art and so on. However, I doubt if there is much mileage in variations of technique as the main message emanating from the works. Confusing too was the repetition of the same motif in various media. An example of this was Daniel Ostvold's (Norway) three times repeated short story about an artificially constructed animal world put into order by man's divine hand. I think an animated video would have been perfectly adequate. Connected events As with any large group exhibition, individual interesting moments are guaranteed. One of the most ambiguous examples of crossing technical parameters seemed to be Eimantas Ludavičus's "The Meadow". This was a herbarium of small metal plates with cut-outs in the shape of leaf species. These cut-outs contained miniscule, perhaps already crumbled fragments of the real thing in small polyethylene bags. The artificial "unnatural" metal forms are infinitely distant from a meadow as a living organism. However, they are the only ones capable of preserving and conveying information, thus relating to the problems of brands as mentioned in the introduction to the catalogue - art is also a brand based on the ability to recognise the already recognisable. There was an interesting example of viewer deception and intrigue in Estonian artist Tiina Tammetalu's "Estonian Landscapes". At first sight they are monumental examples of classical abstract paintings of areas of colour in tasteful earth tones that in close-up change into an original realism. The artist has used earth from the specific places and all the ready-mades that can be found there - grasses, cigarette ends and so on. Of course, others have also used similar techniques. For example, Jean Dubuffet in "Site aux eveils" (1960) from his Materiologies series, portrays a concrete piece of land with the help of stones and sand. Certainly, in Tammetalu's work there is something of a sovereign world that draws you into it. One of the undoubted favourites of the show was Lithuanian Jurga Barilaite's "Necessary Defence" - a heightened brutal interpretation of action painting. The resulting "boxed" face of a child further increases the work's ambivalence with regard to the theme of violence. Recalling classical feminist theories on painting as a patriarchal form of expression (the artist's use of a brush is seen as analogous to male behaviour as opposed to feminine handicrafts), this violence against the canvas seems to play on the theme of positive discrimination; i.e. the required exaggeration for the introduction of balance. "Actually, this aggressive form of painting is not assault but defence against the oppressive canons of art and the artist's exaggerated self-expression. The painter is boxing with the everyday life and routine that sets apart the worlds of painting and family."2 However, there is doubt whether a simultaneous assault on both the canons of art and the everyday is not too general to be aimed precisely. There is something similar in young British artist Marcus Harvey's scandalous work "Myra" (1995). He created a portrait of a child murderer from children's handprints. In this case, however, the accent has been placed on the shock of interpreting the end result but in Barilaite's work the action itself seems to be the most important. Latvians at the triennial Ģirts Muižnieks' painted metal sheets, recently on view in a personal show at the Riga Gallery fitted in well with the collection of various versions of Abstract Expressionism. As opposed to their sometimes saturated and heavy neighbours, Muižnieks' works stood out with their laconism and impression of elegant coincidence. On the other hand Sandra Krastiņa's triptych from the "Flowers of the Wind" exhibition found a home in a different part of the hall, which was dominated by breaths of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction with mainly geometric elements. Ieva Iltnere's portrait made from layers of dotted raster took on an unexpected monumentalism. Inga Brūvere's plastically modelled works "Colour. Green" (2001) and "Colour. Red" (2002) also stood out as certain dominating accents at the beginning of the exhibition tying in with the colour spectrum range as the idea behind the motif of the exhibition. Of course, the recognition factor may play a part, but the Latvian participation seemed to be somewhat boring and a little unnoticeable. Dominants and favourites On the whole, the exhibition gave a conspicuous impression that the real curators were a whole series of foreign celebrities - primarily the New York Abstract Expressionists Franz Klein, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann and Francis Bacon too, the Danish Cobra group and a whole slew of other canonic figures from 20th century Western art. There is no way of escaping the conclusion that here we have the tendency of a provincial art school to rework forms of expression that have been found elsewhere long ago. On the one hand, this could be seen as a shortcoming, as a "crisis in the painting of a region, when the traditional form of expression is no longer able to find contact with today's world" 3, but on the other, also as a logical and inescapable expression of the adaptation of Western processes. The proviso introduced in this triennial, that there would be no works by artists who had appeared in the previous two exhibitions could give a somewhat distorted view of the overall picture of painting in Lithuania. However we can distinguish the dominating tradition of expressionism whose obviously brightest (literally and figuratively) representative could be Vilmantas Marcinkevičius. Using maximally heightened blue, red and yellow tones, he has managed to produce pop-artistically brilliant and attractive works that have existential depth and an aura of seriousness. Paulius Juška and Sigitas Staniūnas should be mentioned as representatives of pure post-modern retrospectivism. The distribution of the triennial prizes also gives cause for thought; the best debut was given to Žygimantas Augustinas for his academic self-portraits with a touch of grotesque exaggeration. The only quality that could be read was the tension created by the incompatibility of the result and the means between his efforts using a schoolboy-like labour intensive technique to capture the nuances of momentary emotional grimaces. Other laureates were the Norwegian artist with the pseudonym of Pushwagner and Lithuanian Aušra Barzdukaite-Vaitkūniene. Pushwagner exhibited comic strip like plastically bending skyscrapers whose immeasurable height was reminiscent of the future world in Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element" (a connection with the sponsors of the prizes will obviously have been the deciding affirmation of "quality"). Barzdukaite-Vaitkūniene, with conceptual superficiality, daubed a background on which there was a comical rabbit on skates holding a fly agaric mushroom. The absurdity of the title perhaps tells us something about the meaning of the show or the lack of it - "When You're Thirsty, Walking on Amber is Easy". Reflection of the current situation, the documentation of the processes and explorations in painting may be regarded as important functions of the exhibition even though "the road to the unknown shore" does not come up with many pleasant discoveries. However, on this occasion an essential contradiction is taking shape with the triennial as a juried exhibition with its pretensions of a certain (what?) level of quality. This dilemma also calls into question the concept of Latvia's "Autumn" exhibition - a decision must be made between two different aims - stating the current situation and realisation of the curator's concrete idea. 1 Ignas Kazakevičius, Rita Mikučionyte in: 12th Vilnius Painting Triennial: Seven Rules of Painting [Catalogue], Vilnius: Artseria, 2004, pp. 8-9. 2 Kreivyte, L. New Spice for Art, or Mutation of Artistic Gesture. In: Gyvenimo Druska / Salt of Life: Contemporary Art from the Baltic States [Catalogue], Vilnius: Galerija Vartai, 3004, p. 6. 3 Kļaviņa, A. Sauciens palīgā // Diena, 2004, 24. May, p. 11. | |
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