On Friday and Saturday June 19-20, at 6 and 8 pm, Gediminas G. Akstinas will present his six-minute performance ‘Untitled’ (2017), which is the first part of the artist’s project ‘The Nudes’ (Nuogaliai).
The performance will take place at Savanorių pr. 6 – 25, Vilnius.
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“A friend of mine has once said that we are all visitors of the same nightclub, differing only in what melodies we carry in our heads:
“Here,” he said. “Look out the window, you can immediately see that the Powder “New Tribe” mix is walking down the street.
It’s obvious!
We see how buildings change in the city, we see that sometimes our neighbours see us, we see scratches on walls in the same way we notice inaccuracies in money transactions, we see when we are alone, we see ourselves as a plane in a 3D apartment visualization and dancing in a daytime party at a nightclub.”
Gediminas G. Akstinas’s performance will test the hypothesis of the ancient Greek philosopher and poet Empedocles, who claimed that vision is enabled by light emanating from the human eye. In the fifth century BC, Empedocles postulated that the goddess Aphrodite, who had created people’s eyes, kindled fire in them. He believed that sight is the result of light rays that touch objects when emanating from our eyes. This is evidenced by the sparkling eyes of a friend, or those of a cat, glowing in the dark. This idea gave rise to further theories of optics, such as the ones of Plato or Euclid, who defined vision as the direct interaction of light emitted from the eye and material particles emanating from an external source. Empedocle’s hypothesis, later rejected by science, denied the perception of the world as a passive state of observation and emphasized the importance of participation and direct, material contact with environmental objects
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The main starting point of ‘The Nudes’ is the practice of plastering walls and different samples of plastered surfaces collected from buildings in Vilnius currently under construction. The work of a plasterer in the project unfolds both as a way of thinking and as the creation of neutralizing surfaces and economic objects. Special attention is given to aesthetics determined by both the speed of the global economy and impulsive, often irrational decisions, the thin line between authorial and anonymous action, and the connections between collective work and individual discoveries. The material side of ‘The Nudes’ is also important: the surfaces of plastered walls created by skilled hand movements allow the craftsman to remain unnoticed.
Other parts of the project:
Gediminas G. Akstinas’s sculpture series ‘The Nudes’ will be exhibited in the Paneriai Sculpture Park on July 5-12, 2020. The series is made up of wall plastering examples collected from newly renovated apartments in Vilnius.
A publication consisting of interviews with wall plasterers and experiences captured in daytime nightclub parties will be released in late autumn this year.
Thanks to: Antanas Laukaitis, Gerda Paliušytė, Alexandra Bondarev, Virginija Januškevičiūtė, Gediminas Akstinas.
The project is supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture.
Gediminas G. Akstinas (b. 1987) is a Lithuanian artist currently residing in Vilnius. His recent solo exhibitions include “Companions“ at Gedimino pr. 45-2, Vilnius (2017); The “SHIP ” at Kunstverein, Amsterdam and “BROWSERS”, at the short rent apartments in Vilnius. He graduated from the Sandberg Institute of Arts in 2015. In 2017, his artist book “it depends“ was presented at San Serriffe bookstore in Amsterdam and at the CAC Reading Room in Vilnius.