'Družba' by Kaido Ole and Jonas Gasiūnas at Meno parkas gallery

2018 12 19 — 2019 01 25 at Gallery 'Meno Parkas'
Author Echo Gone Wrong
Published in Events in Lithuania

kaido_ole__est____jonas_gasiunas__lt___druzba_2018_1On 19th of December (Wednesday) at 6pm at the gallery “Meno parkas” (Rotušės a. 27, Kaunas) will be the opening of Kaido Ole and Jonas Gasiūnas exhibition “Družba“. Opening will be attended by Her Exellency Jana Vanaveski, Ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to Lithuania.

In poverty as well as in other misfortunes, people suppose that friends are their only refuge. And friendship is a help to the young, in saving them from error, just as it is also to the old, with a view to the care they require and their diminished capacity for action stemming from their weakness; it is a help also to those in their prime in performing noble actions, for ‘two going together’ are better able to think and to act. (The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle 8.1.1155a11-16)

Jonas Gasiūnas & Kaido Ole DRUŽBA

Scientists claim that it takes not less than 200 hours for two people to spend together to become real friends. And how about 50 year side by side? What if we never asked for it? Being occupied for half of the century together – seeing other oppressed, trying together to stay strong and retain identity. Difficulties unites, so today being separately we are still together. And it brings joy – we want to celebrate this year – to whiteness our freedom, growth and future.

Exhibition presented here is similar – we present two painters – Estonian Kaido Ole and Lithuanian Jonas Gasiūnas. They work far away from each other, they perceive world in different ways and create differently but are joined by that special connection which brings this duet together from time to time in exhibitions.

Kaido Ole:

Naming friendship a concept is wrong, because friendship is not a concept or not even idea but most natural feeling and relationship between people. Too often professional art turns everything into concept or even research having may be the most positive wishes but finally everything turns fake and somehow flat.  So my idea was and is that the main idea of this show is our friendship, everything else are just personal details of art. Jonas created idea to make the parallel with this historical machine saw used in Siberia around 40’s – 50’s and I wasn’t against this joke. It reminds me that Jonas was born in Siberia! Everything have a meaning or reason. Actually I very much believe in this special chemistry between people. Really good relationships can be based only on this. If there is existing this magic “something” everything else goes easily and vice versa. When I first saw Jonas it took only second or two to understand that I like to talk with this guy and there is still no reason to regret this.

I guess that absolute majority of contemporary art or art project are started because situation is far from perfectness and creative people are just trying to figure out what is the problem and how to solve it.  Saying the same in more general way art usually starts from confusion to move towards understanding or order. Our co-operation with Jonas is rather opposite, starting from perfectness to move towards confusion. Perfectness is our friendship with Jonas, best basis to start whatever we like to start. Nothing can go wrong if two people really trust each other and have perfect match as humans.

When I told about our show to one we both now he asked who is our curator. If I said that there will be no curator and we just combine our recent works by ourselves, he tried to stay polite but his face was full of doubts about such a naive attitude. Let’s see how it goes but I still believe in friendship as universal glue not only between people but also between things these people have done. Let’s name it research as everything is used to name our times in art world.

 

Kaido Ole represented by gallery Temnikova & Kasela (EE).

Exhibition is supported by the Estonian Embassy in Vilnius.

Exhibition is a part of the project “Accents. Undivided History”. Project is dedicated to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian independence. 

Project is partly financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuanian.