National Gallery of Art in Vilnius presents three new exhibitions

December 6, 2012
Author Echo Gone Wrong
Published in News from Lithuania

The National Gallery of Art in Vilnius is proud to announce the opening of three exhibitions – ‘The Crowds’, ‘The March’ and ‘About Neighbors and Passersby’ – that explore the relationship between the individual and society in art. The opening of the exhibitions is on Friday, 7 December 2012, at 6 pm; press conference: Friday, 7 December 2012, 11 am.

zverynas_kupranugariai

The Crowds

The representation of crowds in Lithuanian art from the 19th century till nowadays

An air of mystery surrounds the crowd. For some, the crowd is always to be feared, as the mass inherently threatens the boundaries of the individual. Others are inspired to carry out acts which an individual would never dare to perform alone. Everyone belonging to a crowd may experience a feeling of community and equality. But it might still frighten people with its ‘inherent’ rebelliousness: it is crowds that throw tomatoes on to the stage in a theatre, and fight on the barricades. However you look at it, the historical events of the last few centuries are unimaginable without the participation of the masses. But what about today? What is the potential of contemporary crowds, packs, gatherings and communities?

This exhibition presents works of art that were created in Lithuania over the last two hundred years. That is approximately how long the modern phenomenon called a crowd has been in existence. However, the exhibition focuses not on the crowd, but on collective images of crowds born in artists’ imaginations. The relationship between the individual and the collective imagination recalls the relationship between the individual and the crowd. For a crowd is not a sum of individuals: a crowd is a social experiment provoked by a meeting of different individuals.

Curators: Linara Dovydaitytė and Dovilė Tumpytė

Image: Gerardas Bagdonavičius. Šiauliai. Circus on Vilniaus St. 1930 (detail). Šiauliai “Aušra” Museum

demonstracija_motociklas_didelis

The March

The photographs of Ilja Fišeris 1946–1953

The exhibition explores mass festive demonstrations, typical of totalitarian system, through the Stalin period photographs of the Lithuanian photographer Ilja Fišeris (1927–1983). Starting with 1946, Fišeris as a photojournalist of the young Soviet republic took off to the streets of Vilnius to shoot photographic reports on the demonstrations of May 1 and November 7. Today these reports reveal how the new ‘red calendar’ politically tied Lithuanian society to the sacralized space of the Soviet Union and its mythological time. According to the curator Dr. Margarita Matulytė, the proto-image of Soviet demonstrations is the synthesis of arts created by people, defined by Richard Wagner as a universal work of art of the future.

Curator Margarita Matulytė

Image: Ilja Fišeris. May Day March. Vilnius, 1947 (detail). Courtesy of the family of Ilja Fišeris

 5fd45095a868b007b05013834dba7a95_XL

About Neighbors and Passersby

Documentations of performances of the 1970s and ‘80s

The exhibition features documentations of performance works from the 1970s–1980s which originally were performed without the audience and, in their appearance, resemble scenes of everyday life. When observed in reality, they could remain unnoticed or else identified as being something else rather than art. The documentations along with artists’ statements, however, reveal that an ordinary person in a street could actually be someone who voluntarily decides to stay outdoors for a year, or that an accident could be an intentional act, a person lying passively in a bed – an artist at work. Scattered throughout three floors of the gallery and occupying lobbies and other unexpected spaces of the building, the exhibition will remind of the parallel lives passing in front of our eyes on a daily basis, with meanings and goals unknown to us.

Artists: Bas Jan Ader, Marina Abramović and Ulay, Gino de Dominicis, Gilbert & George, Tehching Hsieh, Jiří Kovanda , Post Ars, Mladen Stilinović

Curator Eglė Mikalajūnė

Organizer of the exhibitions: National Gallery of Art

Image: Gino de Dominicis. Attempt to fly. 1970. Still from 16 mm b/w film, transferred to DVD (detail). Collection Gian Enzo Sperone