From 6th to 20th February House-museum of Marija and Jurgis Šlapelis (Pilies str. 40, Vilnius) featured a project of S&P Stanikas Double bed, curated by Kęstutis Šapoka.
“Svajonė and Paulius Stanikas (S&P Stanikas), residing in Paris, are always eager to hold one or another interesting project back in their homeland, and by doing so – in my personal opinion – they always raise the bar of the aesthetic taste in our province.
One of the keynotes of the works of S&P Stanikas is (meta)history and the subject in the turnovers of that (meta)history. Transformations, even transgressions, of social, historical and subjective identity often assume the form of monumental grotesque in the works of S&P Stanikas – one can say that the body frequently becomes the socio-historically shaped “monument”, while the monument appeals to psycho-physiological dimensions. The Soviet era plays an important role in the (meta)history of S&P Stanikas. Its repressive and absurd political structure and representation through social realism and “academism” play an active part in the works of the artists, but it is also ingeniously “distorted” through the turning-point era thus acquiring paradoxical qualities.
The project Double Bed adapted for the space of the Jurgis and Marija Šlapelis Gallery, also features paradoxical connections between artists’ personal, biographical and (meta)historical dimensions. The reports from Libya flowing from the mass media outlets and the ghastly tragedy of the Gaddafi family well surpassing most of the Hollywood fairy tales became the background which “naturally” and insensibly pierced the imagination and around which the plot of the recent works by S&P Stanikas has been developing. The artists offer a personal interpretation of the Aisha Gaddafi’s horrible drama, which has been infused by the media with exclusive aesthetic grandeur and even Biblical motifs; like always S&P Stanikas focus not on the details or ephemeral “relevance”, but on essential, interweaving issues of life, birth and death.”
Curator Kęstutis Šapoka
Partner: Vartai Gallery
Photographs by Marta Ivanova
