Gallery "Meno parkas" participated at art fair ART14 London for the first time last year, which attracted more than 31000 visitors. Successful "Meno parkas" debut encouraged for a comeback. International jury approved it by selecting gallery's proposed project. Gallery "Meno parkas" same as the last year is the only Lithuanian gallery participating at this art forum. Over 150 galleries from 40 countries participate at the fair his year. From Amman to Amsterdam, New York to New Delhi and Sao Paulo to Seoul, the fair will present art from across the globe.

Gallery "Meno parkas", seeking for continuity with gallery's participation last year, will present artworks by Jonas Gasiūnas and Patricija Gilytė at ART15. Also, the solid collection of gallery's booth is including pieces by Laisvydė Šalčiūtė, Laima Oržekauskienė and Arvydas Žalpys. Visitors will be also able to see the video works about the artists, the process of their creation.

Gallery participated at the contest in separate project space category. Installation CONSUME (2014) by artist Kęstutis Svirnelis will be presented, as it was selected by jury at this category, which will be exposed in one of the main passages of the fair.

Therefore, solid contemporary Lithuanian art representation is being expected.

Gallery's "Meno parkas" booth No. B20.
Venue: Olympia exhibition center (Olympia Way, Hammersmith Road, London, W14 8UX)
Event time: 21 - 23 05 2015

Information about ART15 London: http://www.artfairslondon.com/ 

Gallery's "Meno parkas" participation is part financed by Lithuanian Council for Culture and Kaunas City Municipality.

Jonas Gasiunas 

In our memories the actual events assume fantastic forms, thus making them less hazardous. In my art I often recollect the past. The method of recollection reminds of the behavior of someone who has suffered amnesia. The man tries to recall things, but his memories come back like a premonition of the future. Reality remains a deceptive terra incognita. Occasionally it manifests itself as an ominous ghost of the past.

I appropriate motifs for my paintings from diverse sources, such as archival and documentary photographs or materials printed in periodicals, stills from cinema and television films. In structuring my paintings I rely on cinematographic principle. The person who is looking at the picture is expected to feel the smoke drawing “drift” across its static surface, leaving just the background. Such a composition is also similar to the technique used in animated cartoons – a transparent film with a drawing on it is placed on top of a colour background.

It took me long to devise a way that allows me both, to depict some visible shapes and challenge their existence. I feel it justifies my skepticism towards the possibility of objective (re)cognition of reality. Drawing in smoke has proved an ideal means and it should be perceived as fiction. Remove it from the surface of the painting and what remains is only an informing colour code – it provides just a partial reflection of reality, underscoring the limited nature of human knowledge.

I do not have to look for ideas for my work – they come across as naturally as I live my life. I like manual work – it gives me more time to reflect. I make use of subculture by recreating things that have already been created. I do so because I have the feeling that things that have been said – depicted or created – have not communicated enough.

Messages in my works are often constructed on the basis of poignant social or existential situations, characters and objects seem to exist in a mute vacuum – in a partially isolated space. The perceiver of these works must find an individual way of communicating with them. To make it easier for him, I am very particular about my titles. Such a title as 

“Write Your Name on the Glass of My Spacesuit – I Cannot Hear You” 

I believe explains how I go about it.

Laisvydė Šalčiūtė "Secrets" 

It is a cycle of photos which focuses on exploring human's sight as well as tensions and transformations of the relationship it creates. I rethink and emphasize the power of sight, which turns subject into object and vice versa. Water is being used as the main tool of expression (as an ideal symbol of love according to oceanographer Z. Cousteau), while I focus on transforming the traditional relation of sight's power. I observe as the sight, perspective of a photographer-man represents the woman's body, constructs/deconstructs it and makes it a play space for his phantasies.

When I am taking photos, I rethink the subject's place in a dual mechanism of sight and look, highlight the moment when the subject itself is being observed from both sides.

It kind of loses the advantage of power and turns into object.

Laisvyde Salciute “Secrets”

“Secrets” is like a transformation of childhood games into the secrets of adults. “Secret” is a composition of flowers pressed with a piece of glass. It is not the image that matters, it is all about the fact that is a secret.

This secret can only be shared with the best friend. Sharing and (not) keeping the secret created the magic of “Secrets”. If you reveal this secret to the stranger's eyes, you undress yourself and the keeper of this secret. Laisvyde transfers the structure of “Secret” into her photography. The pictures of women are being fragmented and “hidden” under the glass and water. The most vulnerable body parts become dead blossoms that are being pulled out of the dark by the viewer. Secretly seen image is disturbing, but it also opens up the subconscious mechanisms that are best revealed by mythological views.

Upon the entrance to the exhibition, the viewer is turned into stone by the gaze of Medusa. Although the woman pictured in photos are not scaring with snakes on their heads, the viewer is scared by facing things that are usually hidden in public. Uncovered intimacy questions the power of sight as the revealed secret is no longer used for blackmail. Objectified female body becomes a source of unknown threats instead of source of pleasure. It becomes an observers and turns viewers into objects. It becomes a mirror to a voyeuristic sight. The head of Medusa is being separated from its body as well as the shield of Athena. No one is protected from a killing look.

Laima Kreivyte on “Secrets”

Patricija Gilytė "tri - galaxian L4116" 

The trilogy of warmth, light and mobility is an attempt to visually cover planet's history from three different perspectives of time and space.

Visual story consists of separate luminous points (tea lights) connected to chains, lines and shaping associatively perceived spider's webs. Every luminous point signifies both fragile human-being and the light of the lonely window. All points are connected into a whole, allowing the viewer to observe and freely interpret.

Not only viewer's point of view, but the distance also decides, if a single light point is perceived as a part of a larger whole associated with planets or galaxies and detached from buildings, rivers or cities. The movement of light could be perceived as a story, that includes historical facts, wars or a space of luminous and dark areas that reflect flowering and decadence of some cultures or city blocks.This artwork is not seeking for scientific or measurable objectiveness. The source of inspiration lies in the variety of perception. In general, this work is visually influenced by various sources of personal experience as well as by using satellite photos and maps.

This artwork has been created in Linz, Austria, at the tobacco factory, during the artist-in-residence program funded by international project CreArt. The luminous space is constructed of 98 horizontal and 42 vertical lines, consists of 4116 tea lights, each of them burning for 4 hours. 

Laima Orzekauskiene. OPENNESS, AESTHETICS, ETHICS 

Sometimes works that have a similar theme are made many years apart in Laima Orzekauskiene's work. Her grand narrative repeats in a spiral, each time reaching an ever stronger and ever striking openness and clarity. These three works are an expression of a particularly personal experience, linked with philosophical questions of existence and ethics of decisions. These works do not speak to everyone with a common and easily understood phrase. Instead of black and white, a one and only truth, they are dominated by black and red, like passion and pain, or white and gray, a reddish colour, a yellowish colour, and a bluish colour like the subtle nuance of relationships, which the righteous and categorical do not recognize.

Current philosophers observe that most modern people live overpowered by the principle of means and the secularism which comes from it. This kind of person unconsciously tries to push away the philosophical questions of meaning, existence in the world and non-existence, temporariness and eternity, or departure from themselves. Contemporary art is so varied, that one can make do with the means and without big philosophical or ethical question marks. Discussing it in this context, one should call Laima Orzekauskiene an artist of the classical kind, yet almost a modernist, speaking the language of modern art.(…) She goes deeper into the foundational questions. She reflects upon these difficult questions, contemplates them, and joins them with her personal sensuous experience. Analysis and intuitiveness are always side by side. One of these forms of cognition dominate in the creative process, and the result is generally different, but expressive. (…) A later work on the subject of death is the cycle "Draperies" is based on the other extreme, the topics of isolation and departure. It is not a border, or a veil, but a painful outcrop. The sense of death is open and vivid in the "Draperies" cycle, while its tragic nature is conveyed with the multiple levels of the image. The ornament blinds you with its redness. Its structure changes and decays dynamically, with the draperies pressed against the body. The eyes easily recognize the male body that is behind the ornamented drapery. The photographed image strikingly contradict the normal canon of manliness. The body is still stiff, but it is passive and powerless, stuffed into a horizontal square format like an open coffin. The narrative of the unavoidable is shocking in this work, similar to how the death of a close friend can shock a person in real life.

It is just Laima Orzekauskiene's work as meaningful artefacts that create such a strong impression, but also her ethical position. The combination of openness, aestheticism and ethics in her work is unique. The open, naked bodies are do not radiate brutal prose or glazed-over poetry. Open, naked, earthly and very real - such is the aesthetic reality that Laima Orzekauskiene has created. With each new work, she continues to specify her sense of ethical reality and that of the viewer.

Rasa Andriusyte-Zukiene

Kęstutis Svirnelis "Consume" 

Primarily the work was created and presented in ordinary shopping mall. The place which is played by the principles of purchase and sell. The ideas of capitalism, sale, radical production and extreme purchase are being mixed and emphasized in order to state a question - why happening what is happening?

For that reason we need to contemplate on the sensitive, living and breathing shopping sprout, or if preferred, icon.