Photo reportage from the exhibition 'Body and Darkness’ at Vartai gallery

Body and Darkness, exhibition view, Gallery Vartai, 2017

The exhibition balances on the fringes of consciousness and talks about dark inclinations and the (non)human body through which they take shape. Shrouded in chiaroscuro the overtly visual and aggressive artworks analyse different dimensions of the human body inviting viewers to experience their own bodies afresh.

From the twilight and out of the shadows a creature crawls into the light of the exhibition space. Disproportioned, maintaining an awkward posture, marked by a strange lameness it embodies an inexorable and inevitable bodily transformation. Perhaps from beneath the repugnant surface the voice of sanity can be heard? Alas, in an unsound body lurks an unsound mind! It evokes voyeurism, sadism, madness, egoism and dark intentions that are hiding behind the curtain.

Body and Darkness is a visual story. The exhibition’s textual character is twofold. On the one hand, the expressive works of art in the gallery space act like characters which have arrived from different narrative dimensions: artistic, personal, political, religious, local and universal, the past, the present and the future. On the other hand, the curatorial composition and architectural dynamic point towards the story of the show and encourage the viewers to read it as if it was a text focusing their attention on the combinations of form, composition, context and meaning. The bleak tale has a beginning, a climax and a denouement, however, at the same time it is not strictly consistent. While pulling the viewers closer and moving their eye from one section to the other it also allows their minds to wander and, perhaps, wonder if they themselves are characters trapped in one of the everyday stories.

The exhibition is composed of plastic art bodies. The majority of them are representatives and successors of modernist art practice. Therefore, they are trying to speak, to each other as well as to the viewer, the language of old art and touch upon familiar subjects, such as art for art’s sake, significant form, and iconography. But something in their way of speaking has (been) changed. The voice of the show is programmed for a different time and so the artworks tell their stories in unrecognizable accents.
Participants:
Valentinas Antanavičius, Alfonsas Budvytis, Duonis Donatas Jankauskas, Geistė Kinčinaitytė, Mindaugas Lukošaitis, Rūtenė Merkliopaitė, Mindaugas Navakas, Ieva Rojūtė, Tomas Sinkevičius ir Viltė Bražiūnaitė, Algimantas Julijonas Stankevičius, Mikalojus Povilas Vilutis, Vytautas Viržbickas

Exhibition design: Jurgis Griškevičius
Exhibition architecture: Ieva Cicėnaitė
Curated by Paulius Andriuškevičius