Roland Barthes called plastic “the very idea of its infinite transformation” – the shapeless material of modern myth, forever swaying between forms, always ready to be molded. From this plasticity, the toy is born: a miniature model of ideology and of play.
“Once, I noticed the bright green crocodile toy sneaking into the bedroom at night. I became obsessed with the order of toys, searching for any hidden meanings… “
In this exhibition, order is neither pedagogical nor prescriptive. The Gallery becomes a site of distributed agency where the nonhuman playmates – Delta and Delfina – make marks, choose colours and trigger gestures. The artist does not command, but responds.
Indrė Liškauskaitė learns not to impose composition but to track it, mapping it like constellations or abstract notation systems she often employs. These are diagrams made in movement, traced from toys that act as vectors of motion, leaving visible traces in shared workscapes.
“Artificial grasses soak the paint drops.”
Playground, living space, studio – three names for a single condition, where objects are no longer passive. Toys mingle between brushes, oil pastels stick to poodle curls, chewed sticks uphold piles of paper. Things do not serve a function but instead they offer direction.
The material mutability that Barthes defines in plastic becomes, here, not only a property of a substance but as a mode of relation. Plasticity is enacted in gestures and collaboration – between human and dog, object and myth, toy and order. Forms of care blend with soft architecture – curls, trims, gestures and textures. The surface of play unfolds into contours: drawings acquire bodily presence, flat color begin to sculpt space. Line slips into volume, textured form.
The shifting order of toys reveals forms of entanglement made visible through shapes, surfaces and shared labor we learn to work within both as participants and authors.
Indrė Liškauskaitė is an interdisciplinary artist and PhD researcher based in Vilnius, Lithuania. With her non-human collaborators and companions, poodle Delta and border collie Delfina, she is researching how playing with a dog(s) can become an artistic practice as well as a method to create collaborative art pieces. Liškauskaitė has a background in painting and textile studies. Currently, she is pursuing a doctoral degree at Vilnius Academy of Arts. Her works include drawings, mapping, writing, textile, sound and video pieces, also sculptural installations made of the artifacts of the companionship – dog toys, leashes, sticks, chewed sketches and other findings. She became an agility athlete with her two dogs after reading Donna Haraway’s When Species Meet. Liškauskaitė ironically portrays human and human behavior in order to take a deeper look into social, cultural and philosophical constructions that shape the inter-spieces encounters.
“The order of toys”
Opening: 2025 June 18th 6.00 PM
Exhibition dates: 2025 06 18 – 07 11
Text by Vincentas Zienka
Languge editors: Sophie Durand, Erika Urbelevič
Visuals: Sophie Durand
The order of toys: Delta and Delfina
