Photo reportage from the exhibition 'Palydos' at Swallow

August 31, 2020
Author Echo Gone Wrong

Published in Photo / Video from Lithuania

Installation view

In search of an accurate description of the feeling that has enwrapped everything around us today, perhaps by chance, what came to our minds was Stanislovas Bohušas-Sestšencevičius’s 1917 painting ‘Children of Vilnius’. It came and it never left.

This painting depicts three boys, a girl and a dog, whose different characters are united by their deep gazes, all directed somewhere beyond the picture. In the monumental canvas, the evening sky, painted in colours of fire and stretched under the feet of the children, freezes on the red tiles on the city’s roofs, while the children, hovering above the city in black uniforms, look as if they themselves had just escaped a fire. Their confused eyes, piercing the space around them, seem to be fixed by invisible forces, placing their bodies into awkward poses and distorting their faces, but not in any way capturing the attention of the accompanying dog. What do these gazes, different in emotion yet directed to the same obscure target, tell us? Do they see the same thing?

The painting was created in a time permeated with uncertainty and doubts about the future caused by the changing geopolitical and social situation of that time. Only one thing was clear then – life would have to be completely different than before, because after what had happened, nothing could remain the same. Although in a little over a hundred years the world has changed beyond recognition, the sense of inevitable change and uncertainty seen in the eyes of the children seems strangely familiar and close to us today.

The exhibition Palydos opens at a time when the world is becoming increasingly difficult to recognize due to the changing social and natural climate, and today is also shaken by a seemingly unstoppable virus. Reality has become opaque and dense, permeated with expectations, intuitions and anxiety, while stories and fictions have turned into a way to both protect ourselves and accept the vanishing past, as well as to create a still-uncertain future. These thickening feelings become a kind of grey zone, encouraging either to close ourselves off radically and seek to preserve the old world order, or to look for ways to communicate and function in this reality, apparently so much greater than us. Thus, this feeling can simultaneously act as both an opening and a closing force. It is now more and more evident that the ability to meaningfully share this sense of uncertainty is a like skill that we develop every day – a skill increasingly important in finding ways to communicate in society.

The painting ‘Children of Vilnius’ became an allegory describing our relationship with the city during this transition period, while Palydos – Swallow’s first exhibition – marks this journey from one uncertainty towards another. It features new works created for this exhibition by artists who have an intimate relationship with Vilnius and see it from different artistic and social perspectives. In these works, the all-encompassing uncertainty is revealed not so much as a desire to find answers or solutions, but rather as an opportunity to take a fresh look at what is being asked. This is done with unplanned hints and gestures that create meanings in the interrelationship of the works, when one piece begins to subconsciously continue the story of another, often impossible to tell in words.

Palydos
06 08 2020 – 17 09 2020
Curators: Edgaras Gerasimovičius, Audrius Pocius, Vaida Stepanovaitė
Artists: Gabrielė Adomaitytė, Viltė Bražiūnaitė ir Tomas Sinkevičius, Martin Ebner, Agnė Jokšė, Ona Juciūtė, Laura Kaminskaitė and Nicholas Matranga.
Swallow
Vitebsko str. 23 (Old building, 1st floor), Vilnius

Photography: Laurynas Skeisgiela

Gabrielė Adomaitytė SLC6A4, oil and acrylics on canvas, 150 x 110 cm, 2020

Installation view

Gabrielė Adomaitytė SLC6A4, oil and acrylics on canvas, 150 x 110 cm, 2020 (detail)

Installation view. Martin Ebner 11:11, grass curtain for facade, 2020; Laura KaminskaitėSomething Something, Neon tubing, 30 x 110 cm, 2020

Martin Ebner 11:11, grass curtain for facade, 2020

Installation view

Nicholas Matranga Untitled (Tariffs), Unglazed Earthenware, 2020, Dimensions variable

Nicholas Matranga, Drawings: Information Super-highway (tops and bottoms), pencil on paper, A3, 2016; Untitled (study for tops), pencil on paper, A3, 2016; Untitled (study for bottoms), pencil on paper, A3, 2016; Untitled (tops and bottoms), pencil on paper, A3, 2016

Nicholas Matranga Information Super-highway (tops and bottoms), pencil on paper, A3, 2016 (detail)

Nicholas Matranga Drawings (detail)

Viltė Bražiūnaitė & Tomas Sinkevičius Honies, 3 compositions , UV photography, digital print, aluminum frame, glass, 80 x 60 cm, 2020

Ona Juciūtė Weekends, Bruno Mathsson Pernilla’s chair, silk, silk tulle, silk strips, cotton stripe, 99 x 85 x 90 cm, 2020; Material from the YouTube channel Windysilk displayed on a monitor, 2019–2020

Installation view

Installation view. Ona Juciūtė Weekends, Bruno Mathsson Pernilla’s chair, silk, silk tulle, silk strips, cotton stripe, 99 x 85 x 90 cm, 2020; Material from the YouTube channel Windysilk displayed on a monitor, 2019–2020; Laura Kaminskaitė Be pavadinimo (Classics), paper, 21 x 29,7 cm, 2019-2020

Installation view. Laura Kaminskaitė Be pavadinimo (Classics), paper, 21 x 29,7 cm, 2019-2020; Viltė Bražiūnaitė & Tomas Sinkevičius Honies, 3 compositions, UV photography, digital print, aluminum frame, glass, 80 x 60 cm, 2020