| Mounting an exhibition of contemporary Lithuanian art was always going to be a complicated proposition. The problem is that, for most people, Lithuania is a place that is pretty much bare of references, and even those references often tend to be irrelevant or outdated. You might know, for example, that the Soviet special forces stormed the television tower in Vilnius in 1991 or perhaps that Lithuania was the last European country to adopt Christianity in the late 14th Century. If you are interested in the arts, you might also know that sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, Fluxus founder George Maciunas and avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas are all Lithuanians. | 
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Mounting an exhibition of contemporary Lithuanian art was always going to be a complicated proposition. The problem is that, for most people, Lithuania is a place that is pretty much bare of references, and even those references often tend to be irrelevant or outdated. You might know, for example, that the Soviet special forces stormed the television tower in Vilnius in 1991 or perhaps that Lithuania was the last European country to adopt Christianity in the late 14th Century. If you are interested in the arts, you might also know that sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, Fluxus founder George Maciunas and avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas are all Lithuanians. However, none of this background information provides a solid mental framework for constructing expectations or ideas about Lithuanian contemporary art. Often, people have some hazy idea of all European countries from Poland eastwards who they perceive as still labouring under some sort of socialist realist hangover in which they depict strong, buxom, collective-farm workers or muddy academic still lifes. They reply to my words on the Baltic States by talking of Russia and telling me how much they admire Malevich and Kandinsky, and I also hear of the Kabakovs or Oleg Kulik. This is the biggest problem; 15 years after the end of the Soviet Union, the vast majority of people in the West have only a poor grasp of the newly sovereign geography of the collapsed empire.
I wanted to design “Balticalia Lithuania” as a show that would grab attention; make people look by jolting them out of lazy preconceptions or, even better, out of total ignorance and into appreciation of something of which they previously had no knowledge. To this end, the choice had to be made between concentrating on one small area of contemporary Lithuanian art practice or a single theme which, although neatly cohesive, would, I felt strongly, risk throwing away an opportunity to show an inattentive world what little I could of the exciting diversity of Lithuanian contemporary art. For this purpose, I chose four artists born in four different decades (from the 1950s to the 80s), working in four vastly different styles; all of whom are now considered amongst the most exciting contemporary Lithuanian artists currently creating, and all of whom began their careers at the time of or since Lithuanian independence.
Seen most simply, the period of Lithuanian independence can be considered one of radical revolution during which artists have deliberately cast off all the influences of the formerly dominant Soviet artistic ideology. While the time before Lithuanian independence was marked, artistically, by a regular cycle of official exhibitions, biennials and regional shows that failed to provoke fast-moving developments in non-conformist (modernist) art, the period since is remarkable for its movement toward irregularly curated shows. These exhibitions work with ideas developed in collaboration with single artists and groups of artists, and that take place both in traditional exhibition spaces and in unconventional “non-art” venues; creating an effect of periodic bursts of activity and heightened motion. The first half of the 90s saw Lithuanian artists enthusiastically grasping new tools and embracing new forms of artistic expression such as installations and video and sound projects, while actively rejecting what had come before. The latter half of the decade saw a different approach develop, whereby artists came to rely less on contrasts and contradictions for effect in a world in which geopolitical and gender boundaries were increasingly blurred. They began to reflect more on the interdependence of ideas; to create art that is informed by a spirit of discussion, contemplation and intimate revelation.
While Lithuanian contemporary art has undoubtedly experienced an integration of sorts into the international context, it must be remembered that the ideas and ways of working adopted in the early stages of independence were based only on the barest of academic knowledge. Lithuanian art that has developed out of this period and that which is being created now does not necessarily flow directly from cohesive international movements, but more from a distinct Lithuanian contemporary artistic “tradition” that embraces a huge diversity of forms; intermingling with each other and brushing against and alongside international tendencies.
The first room of “Balticalia Lithuania” is dominated by Saulius Vaitiekunas’ installation Message, in which eight tons of boulders collected by the artist from the Lithuanian Baltic Sea coast spill in massive abundance from a neon-lit telephone box onto the gallery floor. The work can be seen as representative of Vaitiekunas’ work, which has moved, in the past two decades, from small, delicate objects in stone and inlaid silver reminiscent of shamanic amulets, to an overwhelming monumentalism of form. These works take commonplace and natural objects and either imbues them with new value or subconsciously reminds the viewer of ancient archetypes and primeval associations. His works are formed out of myriads of circular, saw blades and clock mechanisms, thousands of dismembered plastic dolls painted white on a wall, rooms full of turquoise trawling nets that cover the ceiling and overflow into the street, and whole weather systems composed of hundreds of chiming, twisted, aluminium clouds.
Vaitiekunas creates a heavy, enigmatic, laden art of symbols that speaks of a search for revelations into the essential nature of being. In Message, the stones, although motionless, seem to have burst from the confines of the enclosing telephone box, and to be moving across the floor. Whatever it is that they are trying to convey, the stones are motivated and rooted simultaneously. They reach out towards the audience; inviting them to partake in a knowledge that seems almost tangible, but remains inevitably hidden within the stones which become, both individually and collectively, an expression of the eternal inscrutability of existence.
Similarly, the work of graphic/installation artist Egle Kuckaite explores hidden realms of reality and multiple semantic layers. Whereas the symbols used by Vaitiekunas are universal and eternal, those signs and symbols used by Kuckaite are mixed between the commonplace and the private, partially revealed and unexpected. For “Balticalia Lithuania,” Kuckaite has created the new graphic installation, A Miracle. The Cocks Have Not Yet Crowed. Normally, she calls these installations “wall actions” but, in this case, the action spreads over the gallery ceiling as well, from which fragile wooden structures are suspended. These structures are reminiscent of umbrellas in form except that, where one might normally expect to find a fabric canopy, the struts of the umbrella instead support a sky-blue cross with a golden figure of Christ lying on top of it. On the walls and ceiling are contour drawings of the faces of famous women: Indira Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Marie Curie, Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo, Isidora Duncan and others, all framed by angels’ wings. Kuckaite’s stated aim is to play on the concept of “bearing your cross” and believing in the possibility of miracles as a root of creativity.
However, this is only at the surface of the work. Closer examination shows that each of the drawings on walls and ceiling is composed of hundreds of tiny, hand-carved stamps, or “clichés” as Kuckaite calls them (clichés are the metal stereotype or electrotype blocks used for printing). These are personal signs and symbols built up over years into a private artistic language that is constantly added to, modified and repeated. Each “cliché” is reused in several different works and the artist explains, playing on words, that she literally “writes and talks in clichés.” Of course, her discourse in this format remains only partly comprehensible to the spectator; the artist highlights fascinating tensions between credulity and doubt as echoed in the title of the work only through its veiled reference to Peter’s denial of Christ. These tensions are repeated in the interplay between private anima (the stamps) and the public persona (the contour drawings) through the different layers between the perceived reality of a face and the artificial print of it made from a hundred other smaller stamps; each of which has its own, hidden significance. Finally, there is the disconcerting play on received religious platitudes, which throws doubt on surface appearances and uncovers an inexplicable and secret backdrop.
Another work that plays strongly on the subversion of expectations is the intensely powerful and concentrated video installation by Jurga Barilaite entitled Storm in a Teacup. I say concentrated because, unlike the vast, multi-screen projections of other video artists currently in vogue, Storm, shown in a small darkened room, focuses the viewer’s attention to a single glass of milk sitting on an unadorned, circular table onto which is projected the surreal, disturbing and beautiful moving image of the artist swimming and drowning; struggling to stay above the surface. As with much of Barilaite’s work, both past and present, whether video, painting or installation, the artist herself is equally present both as creator of and as participant in her art. As in her earlier video work Self-Defence (2001), where the artist is seen painting a baby’s head on a vast black canvas hung on the wall by boxing against it with gloves covered in white paint, ideas of domesticity and violence are inextricably linked. Whereas in Self-Defence the small is enlarged to grotesque proportions, in Storm in a Teacup humanity is dwarfed and engulfed by the minutiae of everyday routine; thus evincing the fragility of man even in relation to those aspects of daily life that seem most comforting and familiar; giving the viewer an almost god-like perspective on our frail collective condition.
The final room of “Balticalia Lithuania” is filled with the works of the young photographer Edita Voveryte. Since 2001 all of her photographs have been part of the series “Self-Portraits,” which has included different cycles moving from her highly stylised earlier works where her models are made-up in silvers, golds and fabulous orange and yellow pigments, through the muted, emotionally charged and mysterious images of the last two years, and on to the “Water” cycle, taken in London this Summer. In this series, swimming-pool blues explode onto the gallery wall, bubbles float in agonising perfection from an imperfect swimmer’s nose, and the precise, painted toenails of a faceless model hang suspended in the water above the billow of a sodden dress. All of Voveryte’s works are created without the aid of a computer and are taken using an old, manual SLR camera. Always reluctant to ascribe any particular motivation or direction to her images, Voveryte is keen to assert that her photographs are created simply in order to provoke an idea or impression. What this idea might be remains as mysterious as her works, which rarely allow the viewer to see the whole person or scene, but instead reveal glimpses of a body or place; the barest whispers of a private history. Although titled “Self-Portraits,” none of the images in the series depicts the artist herself. Instead, Voveryte uses close friends as models for all of her images, explaining that they are part of her—stand-ins as it were for her own presence. So, perhaps what we are seeing when we look at her pictures are not unrelated images (albeit of great beauty), but instead a synaesthetic projection of private histories and legends that may only be a vague part of the artist’s consciousness, but which strike hidden chords in all of us.
