The opening of the exhibition “In Exchange to Ages” will take place on Friday 20 October at 6pm, at the National Gallery of Art (Konstitsucijos pr. 22, Vilnius). The exhibition will present works by emerging artists, participating in the JCDecaux Award project. Interweaving folklore, gossip, electricity, weather forecasting, coding, and the ratio of metal to soluble minerals, the exhibition presents a range of artistic expression from sculpture to performance.
The JCDecaux Award project, initiated for the eighth time by the Contemporary Art Centre and the outdoor advertising company JCDecaux Lithuania – has undergone a number of exciting variations recently. In the spring, a new team of curators was introduced: Kotryna Markevičiūtė and Ona Juciūtė; and the exhibition architecture was entrusted to Povilas Marozas. For the first time, the exhibition is held in a museum space – the National Gallery of Art, a subdivision of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art. Here, the works of emerging artists are presented alongside artwork from the 20th and 21st centuries. According to the curators, “located next to this collection, the new JCDecaux Award exhibition will enable a non-linear, polysemous conversation between the artworks, their materiality, and their stories.”
Sandra Golubjevaitė, Mykolas Valantinas, Miglė Vyčinaitė, Joelis Aškinis, Tatjana Frenkel, Urtė Janus
Following an open call competition, which received more than 100 applications from emerging artists, Markevičiūtė and Juciūtė selected more participants than usual and will present six artists in the exhibition: Joelis Aškinis, Tata Frenkel, Sandra Golubjevaitė, Urtė Janus, Mykolas Valantinas, Miglė Vyčinaitė. The curators said that the ideas of the selected artworks easily shaped the exhibition’s vision due to the intriguing interplay among them, in which different experiences of time were revealed in various ways.
“From the moment you say a word or a fantastic image is conjured up in your head, when an HTML code is generated in the browser, when you enter the electromagnetic field of other bodies or a rain cloud forms over your head, to indefinitely long civilisational shifts or geological processes. In this exhibition, the artworks stumble on one another, meet in silent dialogue, scatter across the National Gallery of Art and enter into the nearby collection of art. Through the fragmented narrative we have invited viewers to exchange knowledge and beliefs that shape our daily reality into experiences lingering in the flow of different times and temporalities.” – the curators say, explaining their vision of the exhibition.
Ona Juciūtė and Kotryna Markevčiūtė. Photo: Visvaldas Morkevičius
The JCDecaux Award is an annual cycle of exhibitions initiated in 2016 by the Contemporary Art Centre and the JCDecaux to promote the artwork of emerging Lithuanian artists, raising its profile in Lithuania and abroad, and expanding the public interest in contemporary art. Each year, the project’s curators receive applications through an open call, evaluate them and select participants to receive financial and institutional support for the creation and presentation of new artworks. The one-off award of €4,000, granted by the JCDecaux, is awarded by an international jury to one participating artist or collective based on the originality, relevance and artistic expression of their artwork. The public are also encouraged to express their preference. The artist most appreciated by the public will be given the opportunity to present their project within the JCDecaux OOH network of public advertising spaces.
The exhibition runs until 3 December 2023 at the National Gallery of Art (Konstitucijos pr. 22, Vilnius). Opening hours of the National Gallery of Art: Tuesday & Wednesday 11am–7pm, Thursday 12–8pm, Friday & Saturday 11am–7pm, Sunday 11am–5pm.
The project is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.
