Discussion “Where does the gallery start and when does it end?”

Even though the importance of free market and private sectors is stressed constantly in the neoliberal public space, Skaidra Trilupaitytė suggests in her book “Kūrybiškumo galia? Neoliberalistinės kultūros politikos kritika” [“Power of Creativity? Critique of Neoliberal Culture Politics”] that in most cases the principle of free market remains only declarative since the power of the state keeps on growing under neoliberal conditions. In fact, most expositional spaces in Lithuania are owned by state institutions, so one of the more important questions for today is the attempt to fully realise how private galleries work in this sort of situation. For the bigger part, these galleries are forced to organise prestigious exhibitions at the better, state-owned spaces, and sometimes they don’t even have their own halls. Isn’t this just another consolidation of institutional dominance? How are the strategies of galleries being formed after exploring the specific situation in Lithuanian and foreign art markets? A solid strategy, combined with the need to be in the avant-garde (or maybe in the underground even) gives birth to a paradigm that every gallerist faces. The aim of this discussion is to try to understand when, where and how does the gallery start and end, at the same time uncovering different methods to form strategies. 

Moderator: Aistė Kisarauskaitė (Trivium Home-Gallery). Participating: Vilma Mačianskaitė (Contour Art Gallery, Vilnius), Tal Nisim (Indie Photography Group Gallery, Israel), Gintaras Česonis (LFS, Kaunas Gallery), Dainius Liškevičius (Vitrina Gallery, Vilnius).