Group exhibition, curated by Ona Juciute & Kotryna Markeviciute
On 20 October, the National Gallery of Art (Konstitucijos pr. 22, Vilnius) hosted the JCDecaux Award exhibition “In Exchange to Ages”, organised by the Contemporary Art Centre and the JCDecaux OOH network – Out-of-Home digital and static advertising for the urban outdoor environment. The exhibition, presenting the work of emerging artists, interweaves folklore, gossip, electricity, weather forecasting, coding, and the ratio of metal to soluble minerals, while the expression of artistic ideas ranges from sculpture to performance.
Discussing their intentions behind the exhibition, the curators say: “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 artist Urtė Janus, who currently resides and creates in London, presents the sculptural installation All the Seas Long Gone. With this piece, Janus offers us a glimpse our planet’shistory, spanning beyond the limits of human time and existence, which has led us to the present day. Janus’ sculpture is created using natural materials formed over different periods – salt, limestone, and human-made aluminum. When aluminium is affected by salt, natural chemical reactions occur, leading to slow and irreversible changes in texture and colour. By encoding the natural evolution of materials in her artwork, the artist reflects on deep time, human existence in a wider cosmic context, and the invisible processes constantly unfolding around us.
— Kotryna Markeviciute and Ona Juciute
Photography by Andrej Vasilenko