Remigijus Venckus' exhibition "Blank Screens" at Šiauliai City’s Cultural Centre

2014 01 31 — 2014 02 20
Author Echo Gone Wrong
Published in Events in Lithuania

Parodos plakatas

On 31 January, Friday, 6 pm Šiauliai City’s Cultural Centre “Laiptai Gallery” (Žemaitės Str. 83, 76234 Šiauliai) presents an exhibition Blank Screens by Remigijus Venckus, media artist, art critic, lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University. The Exhibition is comprised of new pieces of creation from the experimental photography series Strip of Amnesia (“Amnezijos juosta”). The photographs have been taken in 2013 – 2014. This is the fourth exhibition from the series Strip of Amnesia and the second solo exhibition by this artist at “Laiptai Gallery”.

We often feel stress living in abundance of visual culture and being participants in this culture. This is a response to information attack, rivalry of senses, competition of meanings. The contemporary relentless messaging is like constant moving on the communication highway which brings closer to the addressee. We often notice that more messages are created than read. This excess drowns the true content of a message (in this case the content of an artistic piece of creation). This changes the form as well. It becomes more bizarre and is covered with a layer of uncertainty.

As content and form sinks to some kind of intangible cultural bottom and is covered with dirt there, then I (the author of the message) and you (addressees of the message) meet the content of the content, form of the form, myth of the myth, story of the story, idea of the idea, and finally experience of the world’s experience… So being an active participant in the contemporary art (both as an observer-researcher and as a creator) I think to myself and assume that pure things move away from me at present. The one getting further away opens as a dream within the ephemeral distance. It goes round me as a desire that cannot come true decorated with the mist of utopia. Maybe I create in order to purify myself from this toxic scurf of culture.

So artists (just like me in this case) seek to somehow purify themselves and absorb reality freely, to tell only as much as necessary and to avoid narration of narrations, reality of realities, experience of experiences and so on. Like many creators I am overwhelmed by desire to say neither too much nor too little or to speak through a piece of creation without saying a word… Although the most pressing desire here is to establish a relation between the pure form and clear content, I really do not know if I have been able to implement this objective…

My new collection of works titled Blank Screens puts off the intention to denote something clear and special. This Series embodies the question about the presence in absence, reality in fantasy, flatness in unevenness, space in lack of space, experience in lack of experience, guilt in innocence… This is my game as an author during which I establish depiction without depicting anything. This depiction is limitary just like a piece of creation 4 min. 33 sec. (year 1952) by John Cage (1912–1992), where the pianist just uncovers the keyboard and does not play; as well as Zen for film (8 min., year 1964) by Name June Paik (1932-2006) where only a white screen is shown; just as Anemic cinema (7 min., year 1926) by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), where a rotating spiral is demonstrated. Although I can give a lot of similar examples of abstract art, I have to state that the motive behind all of them is search and development of perfect artistic speech as if it was primary. This is a return to pre-verbal speaking, to abstract depiction of the world not necessarily associated with widely (even now) used (or no longer used) expression forms of the world. This is like an abstract painting suggesting not necessarily a conscious return to somewhere where there is something prior to rational writing; this is escape to somewhere where highly empirical experience comes first.

Formal and abstract image is a play of ghosts going forward without rules set in advance, accompanied by feelings not controllable by consciousness. Checking or testing the world through this kind of art is neither simple, nor convenient. It is as if abstract art serves as means for turning back to Plato’s philosophy claiming that a man knows not the real material world through images but rather expression of the world. So in this case I think that abstract art strongly refuses to create copies by seeking to express something that cannot be expressed and in this way it tries to discover things inside. Abstract creation represents the fight against the Western metaphysics as entrenchment of multiple copies in a copy.

According to philosopher Philippe Sers, abstract art challenges reality to a duel and sets a task to create a new language. This new language was referred to as the language of Paradise already by artists representing the Dada Movement. This is the language used after expulsion form Paradise. Adam, work of the Lord, shared this language with the first people (his direct descendents).

So abstract art serves as means for returning to the language of Paradise which existed prior to violence. Abstract art shows that historically violence occurred not through physical force but through rationalized writing and art enabling fight of the new language against the current language and the language being established. Now the current language is prevailing. It spreads and conceals things inside. So I suggest checking the world through art, to rely on one’s own institution, personal creativity and in this way develop approach towards things inside. My pieces of creation should not be perceived as pure links to history of images. My pieces of creation are an abstraction that begs to go behind the system. To go there where it (the system) has come from. I invite to go behind directed or documented photography, behind popular movie, behind realistic painting, behind classical literature, behind harmonious music and even behind the norms of visual experience. I invite to go behind information highway on which people go without stopping…

For more information see: www.amnesia.venckus.eu

The Exhibition is organized by: Šiauliai City’s Cultural Centre “Laiptai Gallery”