Photography exhibition of Alvydas Lukys
Photography exhibition of Vitalijus Butyrinas
Photography exhibition of Aleksandras Ostašenkovas
Exhibition "Polish Paradise 2020"
Alvydas Lukys. Objects From the Sea
Tuesday, September 8th, 5.30 p.m., Thomas Mann Museum stairway (Skruzdynės 17)
My attention would be constantly attracted by random objects that appeared next to each other. I became interested in their forms and possible meanings. This is how a series of photographs came to be, which I have called "Metaphors". For me, this was probably the first step in researching the photographic narrative.
The possibilities of reading the meaning of the found objects became even more apparent when I was taking photos of objects that the sea threw out. Having changed their natural place, having found themselves on a sandy beach, they would become like messages in a bottle. Photography is a powerful catalyst for memory, in the sense that the impressions experienced in life will fade, settling deep in one‘s memory. Photographs seem to pull them out as associations. I believe that this is the engine of the photographic narrative. In the case of "Objects From the Sea", I make up a catalog of found objects, a certain typology, whose differences and repetitions build a certain field of narrative associations.
After the series of sea findings, I formulated my creative strategy. An object found, whether handmade or simply used by someone for a long time, transferred from its natural environment to a white studio space, becomes a narrative object. The viewer gets the opportunity to contemplate the photograph, which becomes a kind of pretext for reflection on a possible story related to the object.
Alvydas Lukys, July 2020
Alvydas Lukys (b. 1958) is an artist, curator and lecturer at Vilnius Academy of Art. His artistic approach is closely related to the concepts of remembrance and everyday culture. As a curator and lecturer, his main interests lie in the field of various aspects of cultural anthropology and photography in contemporary art.
Alvydas Lukys. Chair; Cross; Wooden
Vitalijus Butyrinas
Tuesday, September 8th, 6.00 p.m., Curonian Spit History Museum (Pamario 53)
The exhibition has been assembled from artworks stored in the fund of the Lithuanian Photographers Association.
Vitalijus Butyrinas (b. 1947) is one of the most uncommon artists in the scene of the so-called Lithuanian school of photography. "The artist later moved away from the method of reportage artistry typical of his many colleagues and began to make photomontages where he used the original photographic image only as a source material. Initially, Butyrin used montage, an enhanced contrast of black-and-white photographs and aesthetics resembling the graphic arts in order to achieve clarity and conciseness in his compositions. These peculiarities of the pictorial form of photographs, the fantastic plots of artworks and their symbolism became the most important features of Butyrin's work, which characterised his most mature works created in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as their series." ‒ Tomas Pabedinskas
Aleksandras Ostašenkovas. States of Mind
Tuesday, September 8th, 6.30 p.m., Amber Gallery-Museum (Pamario 20)
"States of Mind" show the content of one‘s life between rising and accumulated experience, between birth and death, in constantly discovering new truths and meanings. It is the essence of human life, an existential question that always fills itself with doubts and conclusions, efforts to embrace the unfathomable, to understand the world and oneself, and to name the values of life in an ever-changing experience.
"States of Mind" is a metaphor, or a summary of our past lives. This is evident in the long journey of searching for nature and identity by recognizing and naming one’s nature. Life is given so that you can live it and get to know it over the years – and when your consciousness approaches the fateful limit, you will be disappointed, realizing that you have not understood anything in that life ...
The photographs reveal an intimate world where personal and common human concepts, subjective experiences and the artist's experiences intertwine. It is a kind of meditation inside the photographed and experienced territory, a conversation with yourself as well as in the face of the experience and memory accumulated in Time ...
"States of Mind" make up a journey of experience, thought and feeling towards the horizon line, never reaching that line. According to Isaac Newton, "to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore"...
Aleksandras Ostašenkovas (b.1951) is a photographer, who graduated from the Faculty of Philology at Šiauliai Pedagogical Institute (currently Šiauliai University) in 1977. He has been taking part in photography exhibitions since 1973. Ostašenkovas has organized his 93 solo exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad, participated in over 170 national and international exhibitions, and gained over 70 awards.
A. Ostašenkovas. States of Mind. 2010, 2012
Polish Paradise Cabin: An Exhibition
Online
"Polish Paradise Cabin: An Exhibition" presents works by six contemporary female artists – Lena Dobrowolska, Antonina Gugała, Agnieszka Rayss, Dominika Sadowska, Agnieszka Sejud and Karolina Wojtas – in different stages of their career, giving the viewer the spectrum of topics and artistic approaches specific to each of them. Their wide variety of interests goes from archival stories related to the global effects of short-sighted politics to exploring social issues of living in the times of the climate catastrophe.
Through the rough and outright visual commentary on media manipulation, family life's shadows and glows to the visual study of the images and philosophical approach – the very basis of the complex process of creating a photographic image as a physical object that can signify more than it shows. Each of the artists has established her own strong visual language and has placed herself in the present debate on the rhetoric of visual culture in Poland.
For the "Polish Paradise 2020" project, we designed a light installation form that plays with the memories of Polish culture and architecture from the summer time in the 70s and 80s. Curators: Franciszek Ammer – Fotofestiwal in Łódź, Joanna Gorlach – Kraków Photomonth, Paulina Anna Galanciak – TIFF Festival in Wrocław. Producer: Maciej Bujko – TIFF Festival in Wrocław.
The exhibition is part of "Polish Paradise 2020" programme.
Lena Dobrowolska
Karolina Wojtas
