GIANTS. SOUVENIRS : exhibition in the gallery "Akademija"

Published on Sunday, 26 October 2014 10:19

In 2013 a small resort town Sierre in the Swiss Alps turned into the place which artists Arūnas Gudaitis, Juozas Laivys, Konstantinas Bogdanas, Laura Stasiulytė, Petra Köhle together with Nicolas Vermot Petit-Outhenin and Sarah Hendrickx visited, where they passed each other or desired to be in. They knew about one another and now they even could have some things or thoughts belonging to the ones they have not met. In different ways and through different experiences this space created circumstances for artists to act and to give effect to the meeting/exhibition as a traveller-giant-souvenir a year later in Vilnius.

 A book by the poet and literary critic Susan Stewart On Longing (1984) – a gift of memory, received later on – got the stones moving, collected the souvenirs of runaway events, and assembled artists to revise stories which were relegated to private memories.

Waddling stones, a book without a place, walking miniatures, promenades and butterflies, pendant phone cabins, flying and passing artists, moving flickers, talking postcards, slinking cameras, physical and mental migration, a place between emerald sturgeons and Starbucks Americano. There where they should have been yesterday they are here today. He has never been there.

Participating artists:
Arūnas Gudaitis (Vilnius, Lithuania)
Juozas Laivys (Narvaišiai, Plungė Region, Lithuania)
Konstantinas Bogdanas (Vilnius, Lithuania)
Laura Stasiulytė (Vilnius, Lithuania)
Petra Koehle and Nicolas Vermot Petit-Outhenin (Zürich, Switzerland)
Sarah Hendrickx (Antwerp, Belgium)

The exhibition was initiated by Laura Stasiulytė and Rasa Antanavičiūtė. The meeting of the artists in Sierre was made possible by Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, the University of Art of Valais (ECAV) and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia (project On Hosting and Displacing, 2012-2013); the meeting in Vilnius – by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and NGO Mene.

Where: gallery "Akademija", Pilies str. 44/2, Vilnius

When: 27 October - 8 November 2014

Opening: 27 October 2014, 6 PM