Thinking in cosmic contexts, what do humans have in common with salt formed in prehistoric seas?
With her fresh sculptural work “All The Seas Long Gone”, London based artist Urte Janus has been selected as one of the participants of the JCDecaux Award 2023. In Exchange to Ages at the Lithuanian National Gallery of Art. In parallel, she was still on a residency at the Sarabande Foundation, and started Art and Ecology MA at Goldsmiths.
In her artistic practice, she explores sensitive topics about human existence, approaching its core in quite destructive ways. Acids and salts, which erode even the most durable surfaces, are the main co-authors in the artist's laboratory/studio, which can be explored in a remote studio visit prepared by The Good Neighbour. “By introducing the process of decay I’m trying to embrace it”, Urte tells us, while holding a glass of meteorite dust.
In the porous centers of the sculptures, time flows. The artist has no desire to stop it at the point of perfection – on the contrary, like an alchemist, she escalates the decay, squeezing out of the materials the prehistoric energies that predict the future. It allows us to think about our changing bodies, the invisible processes going on inside.
Pure chemistry alongside pure existential doubts (and hopes!), are unlocked by the unstoppable processes of deterioration before our eyes. Every process of decay hides a new form of life – this is implicitly reflected in the fountain Urte has exhibited at the Sarabande Foundation summer group show. However, it is nothing like the fountains of youth – instead of water, acid flows, drowning the fountain in a process of self-destruction.
Different time scales merge into a single salt crystal, thousands of past and future tenses mingle in one sculptural body. This formula applies to almost all of Urte Janus' works.