Nerijus Erminas’ exhibition `Thoughtful ocean. Guests` at (AV17) gallery

2018 12 13 — 2019 01 19 at (AV17) Gallery
Author Echo Gone Wrong
Published in Events in Lithuania

Nerijus Erminas, exhibition _Thoughtful ocean. Guests_ fragment, 2018On 13th of December, at 6 pm (AV17) gallery is pleased to present one of the most famous Lithuanian conceptual sculptor Nerijus Erminas’s exhibition “Thoughtful ocean. Guests”.

N. Erminas has had more than ten personal shows during his career. In this exhibition he retrospectively rethinks the development of his creative themes: the relation between the inner world of the human being, his subconsciousness and everyday life. Creating visual stories artist highlights undiscovered everyday rituals emphasizing their surrealism. The exhibition questions rational thinking, which by rejecting feelings or emotional experience, prevents people from understanding themselves and their surrounding. According to the artist we lose opportunity to perceive the poetics of our environment by involving only the rational mind. N. Erminas acknowledges that the rational worldview and establishment of the regulations and their application, in the context of nowadays life that covers public structure, social division, the order of power institutions and our personal life, create even bigger inner chaos. Every human being has a unique path and distinctive perception of the environment; therefore, the exhibition presents cultural and natural contexts as a primordial chaos that is hostile to every human being.The artworks of Nerijus Erminas, like the title of the exhibition, are partly inspired by Stanislaw Lem book “Solaris” and Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie of the same title. In both works the characters study the planet, where there is nothing else than a thoughtful ocean, trying to reveal its secrets. The ocean eventually brings back memories and the past events of the characters and encourages them to access their subconscious mind. Revealed stories are constructed from incoherent memories and facts, remembering the past. In the exhibition N. Erminas uses random objects and creates stories referring to unawareness of the world and the constant subjectivism accompanying us. At first sight, everyday life objects are set without certain logic, creating a dreamy atmosphere where there is no single scenario or final truth.

Nerijus Erminas works are characterized by sensitive transformation of reality into surreal and subconscious experiences. The narrative installations created by the artist transform easily recognizable elements of human life and everyday situations turning them in an unusual direction distant from the reality, while the viewer is caught in a never-ending play of meanings. Stories behind the work of Erminas take shape in the process of observing and analyzing everyday rituals, interpreting both cultural and political context, history, religion, and expressing personal as well as collective experience.

Nerijus Erminas (1976) is a Lithuanian conceptual artist, graduated with master degree in sculpture from the Vilnius Academy of Arts. The artist has had over fourteen personal shows in Lithuania, and actively participates in group exhibitions in Denmark, Italy, Germany, Latvia, China, the USA, Italy, etc. He was awarded scholarship for creators of art and culture by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania in 2012 and 2016. Nerijus Erminas’s artworks were presented in the Lithuanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011. His works are included in the permanent collection of MO museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Exhibition “Thoughtful ocean. Guests” at the AV17 gallery, Totoriu str. 5, will be open until 19th of January.