- Echo Gone Wrong - https://echogonewrong.com -

Exhibitions by Egle Jauncems and Indriķis Ģelzis at Vartai gallery

Egle Jauncems
Malnutrition

Too Much or Too Little. The results from an excessive or inadequate intake of nutrients.

Walking into the pastry shop I can see him rolling a piece of dough on the floury table. A glass wall is separating us but I can still feel the smell of the sweat running down his forehead. He raises an arm to wipe the drips gathering in between his wrinkles and I smile. I am watching his long and strong fingers running up and down the table, flour, dough and the rolling pin. His veins are pulsating. His eyes are burning with excitement and ambition. He proves to be tough and hard-working, creative and caring, consistent and forward thinking.

The dough is evenly spread on the table and is now being cut into round circles with the accuracy and precision of a real man. Speed and knowledge mean they go into and out of the oven quickly. After cooling for 10 minutes, the biscuit is crispy and crunchy. He checks it again to make sure it is crispy and crunchy.

Whipping cream has never been so easy. Inside of the mixing bowl I can already see the instant rise of egg white into fame and power. The man proofs its success by adding more and more sugar. Spoon by spoon the flavour develops into a rich, thick and organic nutrient. The working temperature increases and his presence in the space becomes slightly intimidating, scary and terrifying. However, I understand that such a reaction only transports his nature into another dimension of being. Dangerous, he becomes even more attractive and moist. There is no rest for the wicked.

He starts squeezing cream on to the biscuit. Going around in circles he builds a tower of soft substance, cutting edges and a proud peak. He finishes the composition by adding a piece of skilfully crafted decoration.

I leave the shop.

Egle Jauncems (b. 1984) currently works and lives in London. Prior to beginning her first BA degree in Sinology at Vilnius University she was closely involved in the alternative music scene in Vilnius as a recording and performing artist. After spending almost 4 years exploring and living in the Far East, Egle moved back to Europe where she gained her second BA degree from Chelsea College of Arts in 2013. In 2017 Egle completed her MA degree in painting at the Royal College of Art. Recent shows include Dausuva, Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuanian, Vilnius (2017), Cybernetic Meadow, Averard Hotel, London (2016), Demimonde, Amberwood House, London (2015), Khobz, Marrakesh Biennial (2014). In 2015 Egle was awarded the David Hockney Art Foundation Scholarship.

Indriķis Ģelzis
Rest and Vest

Ģelzis’s wall sculptures seemingly flirt with the future visions and sculptural compositions of the early 20thcentury futurists and constructivists’. However, since the future of the past is now the present, which is a time of great acceleration, the creative principles and semantic field of this artist seem even more relevant than they could have been a century ago. The terms mobility, mechanics and digitalism are to be found not only in the descriptions of technical parameters or futurists’ speculations on the future, they have transcended the boundaries of technology and are now normal everyday attributes. It is not a coincidence that these sculptures remind one of statistical graphics and are related to the dominant logic of algorithmic thinking, where digital images of mountains and abysses are more frequent and real than the real ones.

Ģelzis’s artworks are basically stable in their structure, but their form is in a way in opposition to material stability and hints at dynamism and the moment of stopped gesture, movement or action. Perhaps it is the rhythm of diagonal and curved forms or the fact that it is hard to describe the metal lines of the sculptural compositions other than rising or falling, coming somewhere between mechanical and organic movement, free fall and precisely calculated trajectories of motion.

Artist’s simple, yet complex spatial compositions do not attempt to mimic any real-world figures or objects. Perhaps even the opposite is true in that his works are more prone to visual polysemy rather than reproduction of a particular image or theme by making it abstract or specific. In the very same way, the titles of the artworks do not narrow the range of their meanings, but are more likely to set an intellectual or emotional mood and frequently refer to a few more possibilities in how to read the work. Paradoxically, it is the emptiness that actually occupies the largest part of the artwork. And it is the artwork itself which functions as a negative image, dependent on itself as much as on the surface it is exhibited on.

Indriķis Ģelzis (b. 1988) received his Master’s degree from the Visual Communications department of the Art Academy of Latvia and graduated from the HISK (Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten) Higher Institute for Fine Arts, in Ghent, Belgium. Among other venues, the artist has had solo exhibitions at the National Art Museum of Latvia, the kim? Contemporary Art Centre (Latvia), the Cinnamon gallery (The Netherlands), Hole Of The Fox (Belgium). The artist regularly takes part in group exhibitions. His works have been exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (The Netherlands), the Lundgren gallery (Spain), the Stable gallery (Belgium), the ERA VI VII VI space in New York, as well as other venues in Europe and the USA.