A. Žmuidzinavičius((Antanas Žmuidzinavičius (1876 –1966) was a Lithuanian painter and art collector. He has been collecting the devil sculptures and souvenirs all of his life, the reason the museum is also called the Devils’ Museum.)) Creations and Collections Museum for the first time present an exhibition of the Kaunas/Vilnius based artists – Rolandas Rimkūnas, Benigna Kasparavičiūtė and Kęstutis Šapoka. All three artists are among the best known of the most unknown Lithuanian artists.
In general, artists tend to get into trouble. They often take on the social issues or existential dilemmas in their art works and therefore raise an expectation of resolving them which again is troublesome. So the exhibition addresses this persistent tension.
On the other hand, the exhibition is charged with another tension.The soviet epoch is one of the essential leitmotifs of this exhibition, however, the artists do not show any interest in soviet landfill of history. They are concerned about the soviet epoch which has never actually ended in Lithuania (or at least in Vilnius) and the discourse of art history and art theory in Lithuania is almost totally dominated by the moral and ideological relativism.
The idea to make an exhibition at A. Žmuidzinavičius Creations and Collections Museum (so-called “Museum of devils” because of devils sculptures` collection) arose from the collection of repainted devils cycle by one of the artists as a partial collective continuation and enlargement of this “cycle”. At the end of the exhibition one of the devil paintings will be donated to the museum.
The royal girls` institute” («Институт благородных девиц») – that was the nonofficial title of the art history and theory department at Vilnius fine arts institute, because of large number of daughters of soviet nomenklatura, that studied there in 70`s-80`s of the 20 century.
Photographs by Vytautas Paplauskas
