ARTISTS

Vilnius
LAURA RUTKUTĖ
Professional competence generally gets no thanks, and for this reason Vartai Gallery
would like to take this opportunity to honour the efforts, devotion, collaboration and
ingenuity of all those contributing to the exhibition City Without Walls and this publication.

Our gratitude goes to Liverpool Biennial, in particular Antony Pickthall and Paul Domela,
who granted their trust and recognition by inviting us to the Biennial programme <City
States>. We are grateful to the Contemporary Urban Centre for securing a temporary
home for this exhibition in this characterful converted 19th-century warehouse.

The beginning of every new project requires great responsibility and is fraught with
anxiety. Balance and self confidence emerge due to trust in the artists. Therefore, with
a great measure of emotion, I would like to thank Laura Garbštienė, Žilvinas Kempinas,
Žilvinas Landzbergas, and Svajonė and Paulius Stanikas for accepting the invitation to
participate unconditionally and with enthusiasm.

A project of this scale would hardly have been possible without the financial support of the
following governmental institutions: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania,
Vilnius City Municipality, the Cultural Foundation of the Republic of Lithuania, and the
Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in the UK.

We extend our thanks to AZcommunication, in particular to Laura Montvilaitė for

managing public relations and communication affairs, and Inga Luskovic for her
outstanding support through the difficult period of preparation.

Special thanks go to the people playing a fundamental role in this project – Raúl
Zamudio for his creative contribution and advice, Daiva Parulskienė for her commitment
and inspiring energy, Kristina Ulevičiūtė whose consistent effort made this catalogue
possible, Laura Grigaliūnaitė for visual design, and the Vartai Gallery team – Augustina
Matusevičiūtė, Vitalija Jasaitė, Jolita Skrickytė, and Nida Rutkienė.

Finally, we cherish the long-lasting friendship and support of faithful friends over the
years – Gedvydas Vainauskas, Danutė and Alain Mallart, Eugenija Sutkienė, Oskaras
Jusys, and António Gomes de Pinho.
RAÚL ZAMUDIO

The anthropology of the city would entail a complicated mapping of it in myriad historical
and cultural contexts. While a city needs to have particular features in order to distinguish
it from a town or village, its precursors underscore its inevitable transformation beyond
the pragmatics of a large settlement of communal habitation. Tyre and Sidon were early
cities circa 4,000 years ago that were primarily known as a nexus between east and west,
and were consequently advantageous because of their distinct geopolitical location. The
city at this early date served as a means to an end, and does not yet embody a worldview
or ideology as it did with Pharaoh Akhenaten (reigned c. 1353-1336 BC) and his radical
restructuring of ancient Egypt. Akhenaten, whose name means “Spirit of Aten”, forced
monotheism onto his subjects, and one of his theocratic directives was moving Egypt’s
historic capital Thebes to a new site which he named Ahketaten, or “Horizon of the Aten”.
Aten was the singular, solar deity that replaced Egypt’s extensive pantheon of gods, and
the new capital’s monotheistic ideology is conveyed in the city’s prefix. In other words,
Ahketaten was a city that encompassed all in its metaphorical horizontality, and all was
thus subservient to it.

In the New World, the city was also more than a centralized, socially segmented and
highly populated cluster, for it, too, was conceived as ideological topos. The Inca capital
of Cuzco, for instance, was believed to have been shaped in the form of a puma, and even
natural rock formations found there and throughout the Inca world were thought to have
been materialized by the creator god Viracocha; for the Inca, the city was sacrosanct
because of Viracocha’s cosmic handiwork. It is, however, the Greek polis that is
conceptually much closer to the contemporary city. Yet the polis was highly differentiated
from its Old and New World counterparts. The new, Greek settlement model was
paradigmatic because its political autonomy engendered independence of mind. It would
be presumptuous to construe the Greek ethos of self-rule as a priori for the free flow of
ideas, however. Although Athens was a cultured polis due to its philosophical tradition
found nowhere else in the known world, its ruling body was authoritarian, exemplified in
Socrates’ imprisonment and subsequent fatal ultimatum. Regardless, cities throughout
human history served many functions, and though highly variegated from each other
they were often loci of thought and culture. So emblematic were certain cities that
they became ingrained in the collective, cultural imagination: ancient Alexandria and
its library, and Florence as epicenter of the Italian Renaissance, for example. Even
the Frankfurt School critic Walter Benjamin’s essay “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth
Century” underlines how germane he thought the French capital was to the development
of European modernism.

Many aspects of what we take for granted today that are part of urban life have their roots
in the “capital of the nineteenth century”: Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur is the precursor
of the quintessential anonymous city dweller; and the Parisian Arcades can be construed
as prototype of the ubiquitous shopping mall. Like Benjamin’s thesis of how particular
cities can be conducive for cultural and intellectual efflorescence, the city today is often at
odds with nationhood, as the populist majority is with minority elites. It is in this dialectic,
between city and state within the context of contemporary urbanity, that the exhibition
entitled City Without Walls engages.

City Without Walls culls its title from disparate sources, including an Old Testament
passage, a poem by W.H. Auden, and André Malraux’s “museum without walls”.
In Zechariah 2:1-5, there is reference to the city as open locus: “Then I raised my eyes
and looked, and behold, a man with a measuring line in his hand. So I said, ‘Where are
you going?’ And he said to me, ‘To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its width and
what is its length.’ And there was the angel who talked with me, going out; and another
angel was coming out to meet him, who said to him, ‘Run, speak to this young man,
saying: “Jerusalem shall be inhabited as a city without walls, because of the multitude
of men and livestock in it.” ’ ” Notwithstanding the messianic tenor of this Old Testament
passage, the poet W.H. Auden’s inference of this appears in one of the most celebrated
works in the canon of modernist literature. Published towards the end of his life, Auden’s
City Without Walls (1969) is imagistic and rife with allusions to mysticism and death;
it’s both a lamentation and an affirmation of the city as generative of cultural life and
redemption in the face of human mortality. André Malraux, on the other hand, used the
metaphor of the “museum without walls” to envision a portable exhibition, like Marcel
Duchamp’s Box in a Valise (1935-1941) that would be a compendium of artworks in
reproduction to facilitate art’s dissemination. However City Without Walls may trope these
highly differentiated strands within the context of the City States exhibition, it is a rubric
under which the artists presented individually explore myriad subject matter articulated
in distinct practices that evince artistic nuance, formal heterogeneity, and conceptual
verve.

Laura Garbštienė’s Film About an Unknown Artist (2009), for example, is a multilayered
work that formally and conceptually meanders its way from an art academy in Vilnius to
the streets and metro of Paris. Her film, shot on 8mm but transferred to 16mm, mines the
archaic qualities of an older cinematic technology, all the while remaining aesthetically
fresh and of the moment. The plot concerns an artist played by the filmmaker herself
who comes upon a forgotten plaque at the Vilnius Art Academy that commemorates
the unknown artist. The commemorative statement is ambiguous as to the nature of
its homage: is it to those artists who were anonymous because they practiced their art
when the concept of art did not exist, does it refer to the artist who was excluded from the
canon, or is it a reminder of those who never achieved success in their lifetime, who toiled
in, and into, obscurity? Not knowing whom this marker refers to, the protagonist seeks
the unknown artist as a way to counteract historical amnesia and the cult of the artist,
but it is also possible that it is an archetype that that plaque solemnly acknowledges. As
the artist undertakes a peregrination that begins in Vilnius, the ostensible secularity of
the film’s gravitas gives way to a pilgrimage-like journey, as the artist arrives in Paris in
search of the unknown artist as other. Emphasizing the philosopher Emanuel Levinas’
notion of the other as constitutive of the self, the artist is both same and other; she is
both the subjectivity of the artwork’s author and the object of the artwork itself. The film
has a poetic circularity that folds in on itself as the artist decides to make a film based
on the unknown artist. Memory and place, both historical and personal, are seamlessly
interwoven in Garbštienė’s laconic film. Formal and conceptual circularity are also
germane to Žilvinas Kempinas’ monumental Lemniscate (2008), a large-scale kinetic
sculpture consisting of two massive industrial fans whose billowing force suspends a strip
of magnetic tape in mid-air.

Žilvinas Kempinas’ mobile work is certainly rooted in kinetic art, but its pedigree is broad
and possibly as far back as Marcel Duchamp’s Rotary Demisphere (Precision Optics)
(1925). This sculpture is activated by a motor that spins a decorative motif in circles
producing a hypnotic, hallucinatory effect. It is difficult to pinpoint this work in Duchamp’s
oeuvre, because it seems anomalous when juxtaposing it with his Readymades. What
Lemniscate may share with Rotary Demisphere (Precision Optics) is the use of vision
to undermine that sense and to engender thinking about optical perception, and the
body within a phenomenological framework, as well as questions concerning the social
dimension of space, not a positivistic emptiness devoid of meaning. Kempinas’ forceful,
yet delicately elegant, sculpture is first and foremost visual. There is, however, a more
corporeal sensation felt through the force field of wind generated through the powerful
industrial fans. Not only is there an incorporation of the tactile, but also of the auditory;
for one can also faintly hear the distinct whirl produced by the spinning blades. The work
makes one more cognizant of space that surrounds the sculpture as the magnetic tape
fluctuates to and fro as if its suspension was illusory. Its configuration also poses an
interesting conundrum that may be of a philosophical nature. Lemniscate is the name of
the symbol of infinity that can be pictured as the number 8 turned sideways. While this
could be read in this fashion, it can also be construed as a kind of moebius strip. Although
this schema is mathematical, the moebius strip was used by Jacques Lacan to help
explicate concepts that were part of his linguistically based psychoanalysis. The moebius
strip was a model that undermined Euclidean space; for Lacan, however, it was a model
that could reveal and make problematic binaries, such as inside/outside, love/hate,
signifier/signified, depth/surface.

Žilvinas Landzbergas’ contribution to the exhibition also ciphers an array of source

material in his installation entitled Holy Promises (2010). Consisting of a kind of tableau
vivant in which the viewer is both the one who experiences the work as well as an enactor
in the work’s constitution, Holy Promises is a set-like installation replete with a host
of objects that may seem inconsequential. These include a light box whose veneer is
made of perforated cardboard, two actual tree trunks, small, makeshift conifer trees, a
campfire made from resin whose fire nonetheless illuminates, and a festoon of lights that
ostensibly resemble garlands. The work oscillates with a visual poetics between the real
and the simulacrum, between a feigning of the landscape with its aura of religiosity to
as far afield as Freud’s concept of the uncanny. The latter, for the famed psychoanalyst,
was the condition in which the familiar becomes strange; and rather than rationalize
the possible unease created by this feeling, the cause of the uncanny is irrationally
rejected and thus further buried into the unconscious, only to resurface later. “Uncanny”
is the English translation of Das Unheimliche, which literally translates from German
as “un-homely”, and its original, un-translated appellation is an apt way to describe the
familiar strange of Landzbergas’ installation. The objects that are seeming incongruous
undermine where the inside ends and the outside begins, where the organic resides
as opposed to the synthetic, and the seemingly displacement of the domestic into
nature and vice versa. But the work is also more than mimesis and its other, for its
title de-centers it into other registers as well. Holy Promises may allude to a host of
narrative possibilities that are not mutually religious. Although its signifiers often
remain elusive and difficult to ascertain, it is a poetic work that is more like Antonin
Artaud’s The Theater and Its Double (1938) in being a stage for play or the set of a
film; however, it is theater or film without a script or actors that ostensibly needs to be
created by the viewer as surrogate. In this sense, one could say that life imitates art,
which is the inverse of S&P Stanikas’ Allergy to the Sun (Hannelore Kohl) (2010).

Allergy to the Sun (Hannelore Kohl) is an installation consisting of a large-scale

triptych of drawings, found objects, photography, video and other materials. The title
refers to the wife of German chancellor Helmut Kohl, who purportedly suffered the
last 15 years of her life from a rare disease of extreme photophobia that kept her
indoors and out of the sun. Her condition may have led to her suicide in 2001. Born in
1933, she witnessed first-hand the trauma of World War II, and it is possible that this
abject experience may have been instrumental in her harrowing pathology as well.
An article in the Spectator tells of the Kohl tragedy and describes the maltreatment
she faced at the hands of her corrupt husband as being “married to a monster”. It
may be, if you will excuse the pun, beneficial to look at a previous work by Stanikas
in order to illuminate what their work for City Without Walls is about. S&P Stanikas’
recent, large-scale work was entitled Magda Goebells Queen of the Bones (2009);
and as the title implies, it focuses on what has been called the female equivalent
of Saturn, who devoured his children. For the “Queen of the Bones” killed her six
children with cyanide in a bunker in Berlin as the Third Reich was well into its ruinous
demise. In Allergy for the Sun (Hannelore Kohl), S&P Stanikas have offered another
meditation of sorts on how women succumb to victimization in a patriarchal culture.
Kohl’s sequestering was implied by the press, at around the time of her suicide, as
not only being contingent on her affliction alone. And to emphasize the undercurrent
of matricide in the installation is the phonetic and semiotic aspect of the title’s prefix.
Allergy for the Sun sounds like “allergy for the son”; and even the celestial orb has
connotations to the male gender if we see the moon as subservient and feminine.

City Without Walls is an apt metaphor for the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. One reason
for this is that the Lithuanian capital is a geo-cultural, global intersection between
the easternmost periphery of the European Union and Belarus, Russia, and beyond.
Its openness is not only an architectural trope; many Lithuanian artists worked there
and elsewhere, including those who became instrumental to artistic developments
in other cities, such as the Cubist Jacques Lipchitz in Paris, the Abstractionist Lasar
Segall in São Paulo, and the Fluxus artist George Maciunas and the avant-garde
filmmaker Jonas Mekas in New York City, to name just a few. Although these artists
had long left Lithuania before their prominence in other cities, their country and
its capital remained formative to them. The artists of City Without Walls share this
international sensibility like the artists that preceded them. They are, however, not
representative of the art from their country, but underscore how the work being
produced by Lithuanians both within the homeland and abroad, reflects a protean
aesthetic always in flux and in dialogue with global artistic practices.
Laura Garbštienė (1973) was born in Vilkija, Lithuania, today lives and works in Vilnius.
Since 2002 she has been working in the fields of video art, installation, photography,
action and performance art. Garbštienė is often a dominant physical presence in her own
art, while achieving a critical distance through her fictional narratives. She immerses
herself in various situations, becomes an integral part of them, and thus provokes the
viewer with her performance. A significant aspect of her practice is her experimentation
with language, the fluctuations of the meanings of words, chance, provocative naiveté,
the role of subjective emotional experience, and generality within a multicultural context.
Some recent works of hers allude to the discourse of institutional critique.

Education

1994–00 Vilnius Academy of Arts, MA

Selected solo exhibitions

2010 Film About an Unknown Artist, Antje Wachs Gallery, Berlin

Berries, VDU gallery 101, Kaunas, Lithuania

2009 European Capital of Culture Project ARTSCAPE: Portugal (João Paulo Feliciano and Laura Garbštienė), Galerija
Vartai, Vilnius
What Should I Do So That the Unicorn Would Come and Lay its Head on my Lap?, Ladyfest Vilnius, Galerija
Akademija, Vilnius

2008 Tundra, Galerija Meno parkas, Kaunas, Lithuania

2006 What Should I Do So That the Unicorn Would Come and Lay its Head on my Lap?, Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen,
Innsbruck, Austria

2005 Blind Messages, USF, Bergen, Norway

Sleeping With Cars, Skuc gallery, Ljubljana (G-lab)

2004 Mirrors and Copulations, Rael Artel Gallery, Parnu, Estonia (G-lab)
Procedures (Stream), Druskininkai Town Museum, Druskininkai, Lithuania (G-lab)

Selected group exhibitions

2010 19th Open Film Festival Kinoshock, Anapa, Russia

Keine Angst!, Tapetenwerk, Leipzig, Germany

2010 Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany

2009 Urban stories: The X Baltic Triennial of International Art (Curated by Ann Demeester, Kęstutis Kuizinas),
Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius
ΟΠΑ 0.2 (on πerformance art) “RE-THINK / RE-USE / RE-MAKE”, Bios, Art Athina, Athens
Dopust, performance art festival, Aquarium Bacvice, Split, Croatia
2008 Foreign to Familiar, Cîté des Arts, Paris
It Happens To Be This, Künstlerhauser Worpswede, Worpswede, Germany

2007 Prague Biennale 3, Prague

2420 Čiurlionis, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius
Migration, Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, UK

2006 Selfobjects, Radvilu palace, Lithuanian Art Museum, Vilnius

101,3 KM: competition and collaboration, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius/Kaunas Picture gallery, Kaunas
Video Art from the Baltic, Kunstraum Düsseldorf, Germany
Invasion, Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Germany

2005 Entuziasts, Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius

2004 Tallinn XIII Graphic Triennale In Exile, Tallinn

Rauma Biennale Balticum 2004: Talking To Me?, Rauma, Finland

2003 2Show, Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius

2002 Parallel Progressions 3, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

2001 New: Contemporary Lithuanian Textile, Caermersklooster – Provincial Centre for Art and Culture, Ghent, Belgium

1999 Insecure, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

Grants and awards

2010 Special Mention of the international Jury, the International Critics’ Prize (FIPRESCI Prize), Oberhausen Short Film
Festival, Oberhausen, Germany

2009 The Nordic-Baltic Mobility grant, Kulturkontakt Nord

2008 Residency at Cîté des Arts, Paris

A grant from the Ministry of Culture, Vilnius
Residency at Künstlerhäuser Worpswede, Germany
Stipendium des Landes Niedersachsen

2007 Residency at Kolin Ryynanen Centre for Arts and Culture, Koli, Finland
Sleipnir (travel grant), the Nordic Council of Ministers, Vilnius

2006 Residency at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck, Austria

KulturKontakt, Vienna, Austria
A residency at the state of NRW studio, Düsseldorf, Germany
A grant from the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf, Germany
Residency at Kolin Ryynanen Centre for Arts and Culture, Koli, Finland

2005 Nordic AiR residency at Hordaland Art Centre, Bergen, Norway

A grant from NIFCA, Helsinki
Sleipnir (travel grant), the Nordic Council of Ministers, Vilnius
Break the ICE – international artist meeting – symposium in Reykjavik
Sleipnir (travel grant), the Nordic Council of Ministers, Vilnius

2000 Residency at Cîté des Arts, Paris

II Student Art Prize, Vilnius Art Academy, Vilnius

1999 Residency at Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Salzburg, Austria

Film about an unknown artist, 2009
Film installation, 8 mm blow up to 16 mm, 11 min, looped

An artist feels guilty about being an unknown artist, and decides to travel to holy places in Lithuania as a penance.
Untitled, 2007
Handmade photo album, 22 × 28 cm

The white linen cover of photograph album with the embroidered head of a young deer and three letters: ŠMC (in English, CAC, or Contemporary Art Centre).
This image refers to a typical portrayal of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, with his initials MKČ. Čiurlionis (1875–1911) is the most important figure in
Lithuanian art, and has been the object of speculation in political and art criticism. Three inside black
linen pages of the album contain three photographs: a picture from the internet of Adolf Hitler feeding a young deer; a still from the film “Commando” with
Arnold Swartzenegger, feeding a young deer; and me, posing in a nature museum with a young stuffed deer.
So much for one hour, 2008
Performance, 1 hour.
Vilnius University botanic garden, “Dialogues” exhibition opening

The exhibition is part of the Vilnius European Capital of Culture 2009 (VEKS) programme. The performance refers to critics of an
institution famous for wasting money: VEKS. During her performance, the artist made a poster by writing a text using cranberries which
says: “200 Litas for one Hour”, the sum promised to pay for an artist’s performance.
Three of us, 2006
Video film, 7 min

Standing in the front of the altar, I am singing a song in a language unknown to me. By the west portal
of the church, directly opposite me, a singer, an Arabian-looking drummer, plays on a set of drums.
Halfway between us, an alsation dog lies passively on the floor.
The Bremen musicians, 2008
Video film, 5 min

Working at Residency at Künstlerhäuser Worpswede, Germany, I invited local professional musicians to write a love
song for me to sing. I wrote the lyrics of the song from populist speeches by present and past German politicians.
Love is, 2008
Publication, offset print, oak wood

The quotation by Matt Groening “Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, which suddenly flips over, pinning you
underneath. At night the ice weasels come” is translated by babelfish.yahoo.com into different languages and back into English
and again and again 56 times and written down by Laura Garbštienė.
Žilvinas Kempinas (1969) was born in Plungė, Lithuania, lives and works in New York.
He is best known for his perception and space-altering installations, which invite the
viewer to participate in the art event as it unfolds. Using magnetic tape as a sculptural
medium, Kempinas’ art acquires multiple points of interpretation. Magnetic tape at once
becomes a ready-made, while its use addresses the laws of physics and phenomenology.
Ultimately, magnetic tape is an inaccessible redundant data carrier, and, coupled with
the power of industrial fans, becomes installations which have their own sound and
atmosphere, making them a powerful spectacle to observe. Kempinas represented
Lithuania at the 53rd Venice Biennale.

Education

1998–02 MFA in Combined Media, Hunter College, City University of New York

1987–93 BFA in Painting, Vilnius Academy of Arts

Solo exhibitions

2011 Žilvinas Kempinas, Galerija Vartai, Vilnius

2010 Ballroom, Yvon Lambert, New York

Žilvinas Kempinas, Galeria Leme, São Paulo, Brazil
AV Festival, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead Quays, UK

2009 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy

2008 Žilvinas Kempinas, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna

Žilvinas Kempinas, Le Grand Café. Centre d’art contemporain, Galérie des Franciscains, Saint-Nazaire, France
Open Studio, Atelier Calder, Saché, France

2007 Parallels/Flying Tape, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

White Noise, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York

2006 Flying Tape, Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Columns / Bike Messenger, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York

2004 Flying Tape, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York

2003 Still and 186 000 mi/s, site specific installations, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York

1996 The New Year of King Nebuchadnezzar, site specific installation, Vilnius
Portraits-Fossils, Jutempus Gallery, Vilnius

1994 Painting from Nature, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

Selected group exhibitions

2010 On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century – MoMA, New York
Contemporary Art from Lithuania, European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany
Sketches of space - MUDAM, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg
From Artists’ Workshops, Galerija Vartai, Vilnius
Listen to your eyes, 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine, Metz, France
Transmediale.10 - Future Obscura, Hause der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
2009 Locus Solus, Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris
Fall In/Fall Out, Blackwood Gallery, Toronto, Canada
ZEROplus, 401 Contemporary, Berlin
Go East II, MUDAM, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg
Nightmare Full of Things Unspeakable, Concept V, New York
Das Fundament der Kunst – Die Skulptur und ihr Sockel seit Alberto Giacometti, Städtischen Museen Heilbronn,
Heilbronn, Germany
The Immediate Future, Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden
Espèces d’espaces, Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York
We Go Round in Circles at Night, Contemporary Art Museum Rochechouart, France

2008 NOW JUMP, Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin/Seoul, Korea
New Work: Zilvinas Kempinas, Alyson Shotz, Mary Temple, SFMOMA, San Francisco
Go East, Musée d’Art Moderne, Luxembourg
MANIFESTA7, Bolzano, Italy
Permutations, at the Musée des Beaux Arts et d’Archéologie, Valence, France
+ De Réalité, École Régionale des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France
MANIF D’ART 4, La Biennale en Art Actuel de Quebec, Canada

2007 Collected Visions: Modern and Contemporary Works from the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, Pera Museum,
Istanbul, Turkey
Voyage Intérieur, FRAC-Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier, France
StereoVision: From 2D to 3D, University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, Florida
The Last Seduction – A Welcome Surrender To Beauty, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago
Château de Tokyo/Tokyo Redux, Centre International d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière, Ile de Vassivière,
France
Ready-Made, Yvon Lambert, New York

2006 Les Fils de Marcel, CRAC LR Art Center, Sète, France

Hapax, APERTO, Montpellier, France

2005 Red, White, Blue, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York

Drawings / Works with Paper, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York

2002 MFA Thesis Show, Times Square Gallery, New York

1999 Prague Quadrennial 1999, Prague, Czech Republic

Lithuanian Art 1989 –1999, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

1998 After Painting, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

1997 Footnotes, Reykjavik Municipal Art Museum, Reykjavik

1996 Holy Lie, press project, Vilnius

1995 Whales Stomach, site specific installation, Vilnius

Recent Documents, Balzekas Museum, Chicago

1994 Lithuania Art, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

For Beauty, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

1993 Kultr, Gallery Arka, Vilnius

1992 Good Evils, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

Advent Bunch, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

Awards

2007/08 Calder Prize and Atelier Calder Residency Award, Sachè, France

1998 Kristoforas Award for best Drama Theater Stage Design, Vilnius

1994 Westerly Trust Grant, London, UK

Academie Schloss Solitude Grant, Stuttgart, Germany
Lemniscate, 2008
Magnetic tape, fan, dimensions variable
Installation view, La Grand Café, Saint-Nazaire, France
Tube, 2008
Magnetic tape, plywood, dimensions variable
Installation view, Scuola Grande della Misericordia, Venice, 2009
Serpentine, 2010
Magnetic tape, fan, dimensions variable
Flux, 2009
Magnetic tape, plywood, fan, dimensions variable
Ballroom, 2010
Mylar, fans, magnetic tape, bulbs, dimensions variable
Installation view, Mudam, Luxembourg
Airborne, 2008
Magnetic tape, fan, dimensions variable
Installation view BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK, 2010
Focus, 2009
Magnetic tape, fan, dimensions variable
Žilvinas Landzbergas (1979) was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, now lives and works in
Vilnius. Working in installations, Landzbergas addresses the theme of simulated
environments, and invites viewers to question their objectivity and rationality when faced
with hauntingly familiar scenarios and cultural references. Life-size scenes, seemingly
comprised of stage props made of simple materials, refer to the stillness of a diorama
in the way that it wraps the space and folds time. In this suspended reality, the viewer
becomes both spectator and participant in a play that is yet to be constructed by individual
experience with the work. The logic of Landzbergas’ work is superficial, while the
simulated environment reaches out to the audience through subliminal messaging and
quotations from everyday life.

Education

1998–03 Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius

2001 University of Plymouth, Faculty of Fine Arts, Exeter, United Kingdom

2002 Summer Art Academy (course of Ylja Kabakov), Salzburg, Austria

2005-07 De Ateliers, Amsterdam

Selected solo exhibitions

2009 Art Amsterdam 2009, Rai, Amsterdam

Snow export, European Capital of Culture project ARTSCAPE: Austria (Erwin Wurm and Žilvinas Landzbergas),
Galerija Vartai, Vilnius

2008 Vine of Hearts (from the young artists exhibition series Yellow Line), Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

2007 60W Magic, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam

2006 8 p.m., Agentur Gallery, Amsterdam

2005 Arrivals, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

2004 Red in Blue, IBID Projects, Vilnius

Selected group exhibitions

2010 Common Ground, Nieuw Dakota, NDSM terrein, Amsterdam

Contemporary Art from Lithuania, European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany
From Artists Workshops, Vartai Gallery, Vilnius

2009 Urban Stories: The X Baltic Triennial of International Art (Curated by Ann Demeester, Kęstutis Kuizinas),
Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius
Lunar Distance, Museum De Hallen, Haarlem, the Netherlands
Beyond (Leidsche Rijn, Beeldenpark), Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht, the Netherlands

2008 Decondition, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam

Placebo, Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin
L’Art en Europe (Experience Pommery #5), Domaine Pommery, Reims, France
Down the Rabbit Hole, Real Artel Gallery, Tartu, Estonia

2007 (1), Galerie Plan B, Amsterdam

Off-spring, De Ateliers, Amsterdam

2006 Hit-and-Run, Academiegalerie, Utrecht, The Netherlands

103,8 KM, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

2005 Slow Motion, Exhibition space of Klaipėda, Lithuania

2004 7, Gallery Intro, Vilnius

Boys and Girls, National Gallery for Contemporary Art, Warsaw

2003 2 Show: Young Art from Latvia and Lithuania, Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius
Blizgė, Meno Projektų Studija, Vilnius

Awards

2008 Thieme Art Award, Art Amsterdam, Rai Amsterdam

Holy promises, 2010
Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 1
 37

Holy promises, 2010

Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 2
00-24, 2009
Spruce trees, mixed media, dimensions variable
Installation view, Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius
This is later than you think, 2007
Cardboard, wallpaper, light bulb, 16 × 25 × 35 cm
We remember different things, 2009
Mixed media, dimensions variable
Installation view, Museum De Hallen, Haarlem, the Netherlands
Vine of hearts, 2008
Cardboard, oil paint, dust board, fluorescent light, desk lamps, light bulbs, plastic chair, dimensions variable
Installation view, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius
Svajonė & Paulius Stanikas are two artists who work together. Born and raised in
Vilnius, the artists live and work in Paris. Their practice is as varied in its disciplines as
it is conceptually complex. Exhibiting in many different cities in Asia, the Americas and
Europe, the artists’ work speaks of the universal human condition through drawing,
sculpture, photography and video. The subject of their work is often related to traumatic
and emotional human experience, expressed impeccably through a variety of media.
While their high level of artistry reflects their academic training and the amalgamation of
techniques, they look beyond form as an end in itself, and use it as a means to articulate
their ideas in many visual languages. S&P Stanikas represented Lithuania at the 50th
Venice Biennale.

2003–04 Professors in Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains

Selected solo exhibitions

2009 S&P Stanikas, Films and Drawings, Linq, Ghent, Belgium

Magda Goebbels, Vilnius Art Fair, Vilnius

2007 Queen of the Peace, Volitant Gallery, Austin, Texas, USA

S&P Stanikas, Clay Studio, Philadelphia, USA

2005 End of a Millennium, White Box, New York

S&P Stanikas, Konstepidemi Gallery, Goteborg, Sweden

2004 Inferno, Galerie Vu, Paris

2003 50th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy
Rencontres Arles, Arles, France

2001 S&P Stanikas, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

Kristianstad Landsmuseum, Kristianstad, Sweden
Observatory, Moletai Sculpture Park, Molėtai, Lithuania

1999 Sketches, Winter 1999, Art League, Vilnius

1998 Your Father, Your Sons and Your Daughter, Lietuvos Aidas Gallery, Vilnius
7th sense, Cinema Nova, Bruxelles

1997 Giedre Bartelt Galerie, Berlin

1996 Visions, Jutempus Gallery, Vilnius

Change of Rules: Frames, Wasteras Art Museum, Wasteras, Sweden
Wyspa Gallery, Gdansk, Poland
Will-o’-the-Wisp, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius
1995 2000 of Angels, Pamėnkalnio Gallery, Vilnius
Fire Poems, Jutempus Gallery, Vilnius

1994 Sonnets, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

Selected group exhibitions

2010 The Metamorphosis, Other Gallery, Shanghai, China

From Artists’ Workshops, Galerija Vartai, Vilnius
Ars Homo Erotica, National Museum, Warsaw
The Wasteland, White Box, New York
Ese oscuro objeto del deseo, Pristine Galerie Contemporary Art, Monterrey, Mexico

2009 Beijing 798 Biennale, Beijing

Never Dance Alone, Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, France
Tout l’univers..., Galérie Vu, Paris
80+80, photo graphisme, Pavillon Carre de Baudoin, Paris

2008 Traces du sacre, Centre Pompidou, Paris

Oriente dessin, Anne de Villepoix Gallery, Paris
Garden of Delights, Yeosu International Art Festival,Yeosu, South Korea
Dans le Nuit des Images, Grand Palais, Paris
Vilnius Art Scene After 2000, the Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga

2007 Theater of Cruelty, White Box, New York

2006 MRKS and SPNCR, Delfina Studio, London

Apocalypse Now, White Box, New York
Body Double, Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Poland
My Mother, the Nazy, Artist Network, New York
Galérie Vu, Paris

2005 Los retratos de Dorian Gray, Galeria del arte mexicano, Mexico City, Mexico
Langhaus Gallery, Prague

2004 Panorama 5, Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, France

Un inventaire contemporain II, Galérie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris
Dfoto 2004, San Sebastian, Spain
European Space, Ryga Quadrennal 2004, Ryga
Paris photo 2004, Paris
EU Positive, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin
Rencontres Arles, Arles, France

2003 Paris Photo 2003, Paris

2002 Paris Photo 2002, Paris

Public Relations, Art Moscow, Moscow
Airborne, Midlanda Konsthalle, Timra, Sweden

2001 Model, Modelles Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Self-Respect, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

Awards

2003 State Prize of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania

2005 Delfina Prize, London

2005 Artslink Prize, New York

Allergy to the sun (Hannelore Kohl), 2010
Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 1
Allergy to the sun (Hannelore Kohl), 2010
Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 2
Allergy to the sun (Hannelore Kohl), 2010
Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 3
Allergy to the sun (Hannelore Kohl), 2010
Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 4
Magda Goebbels Project, 2009
Mixed media, dimensions variable
798 Beijing Biennale, Beijing
Detail 1
Magda Goebbels Project, 2009
Mixed media, dimensions variable
Installation view, 798 Beijing Biennale, Beijing
Detail 2
Amen. Mahamrityunjaya Mantra, 2010
Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 1
 LIST OF PLATES

Laura Garbštienė

Film about an unknown artist, 2009

Film installation, 8 mm blow up to 16 mm, 11 min, looped
pp. 12-13

Untitled, 2007
Handmade photo album, 22 × 28 cm
pp. 14-15

So much for one hour, 2008

Performance, 1 hour.
Vilnius University botanic garden, “Dialogues” exhibition opening
p. 16

Three of us, 2006

Video film, 7 min
p. 17

The Bremen musicians, 2008

Video film, 5 min
p. 18

Love is, 2008

Publication, offset print, oak wood
p. 19

Courtesy of the artist and Galerija Vartai, Vilnius

Žilvinas Kempinas

Lemniscate, 2008
Magnetic tape, fan, dimensions variable
Installation view, La Grand Café, Saint-Nazaire, France
pp. 22-23

Tube, 2008
Magnetic tape, plywood, dimensions variable
Installation view, Scuola Grande della Misericordia, Venice, 2009
pp. 24-25

Serpentine, 2010
Magnetic tape, fan, dimensions variable
p. 26

Flux, 2009
Magnetic tape, plywood, fan, dimensions variable
p. 27

Ballroom, 2010
Mylar, fans, magnetic tape, bulbs, dimensions variable
Installation view, Mudam, Luxembourg
pp. 28-29

Airborne, 2008
Magnetic tape, fan, dimensions variable
Installation view BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK, 2010
p. 30

Focus, 2009
Magnetic tape, fan, dimensions variable
p. 31

Courtesy of the artist, Galerija Vartai, Vilnius and Yvon Lambert, Paris, New York
Žilvinas Landzbergas

Holy promises, 2010

Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 1
pp. 34-35

Holy promises, 2010

Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 2
p. 36

00-24, 2009
Spruce trees, mixed media, dimensions variable
Installation view, Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius
pp. 38-39

This is later than you think, 2007

Cardboard, wallpaper, light bulb, 16 × 25 × 35 cm
p. 40

We remember different things, 2009

Mixed media, dimensions variable
Installation view, Museum De Hallen, Haarlem, the Netherlands
p. 41

Vine of hearts, 2008

Cardboard, oil paint, dust board, fluorescent light, desk lamps, light bulbs, plastic chair, dimensions variable
Installation view, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius
pp. 42-43

Courtesy of the artist, Galerija Vartai, Vilnius and Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam

S&P Stanikas

Allergy to the sun (Hannelore Kohl), 2010

Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 1
p. 46

Allergy to the sun (Hannelore Kohl), 2010

Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 2
p. 47

Allergy to the sun (Hannelore Kohl), 2010

Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 3
p. 48

Allergy to the sun (Hannelore Kohl), 2010

Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 4
p. 49

Magda Goebbels Project, 2009

Mixed media, dimensions variable
798 Beijing Biennale, Beijing
Detail 1
p. 50

Magda Goebbels Project, 2009

Mixed media, dimensions variable
Installation view, 798 Beijing Biennale, Beijing
Detail 2
p. 51

Amen. Mahamrityunjaya Mantra, 2010

Mixed media, dimensions variable
Detail 1
pp. 52-53

Courtesy of the artist and Galerija Vartai, Vilnius

CURATORS

Raúl Zamudio is a New York-based independent curator and critic. He has curated over
60 exhibitions in the Americas, Asia, and Europe including co-curator, 2009 Beijing 798
Biennial, co-curator, 2008 Seoul International Media Art Biennial, artistic director, 2008
Yeosu International Art Festival, co-curator, Poles Apart, Poles Together 2005 Venice
Biennial. He has published over 200 texts in books, exhibition catalogues, journals
and magazines. He is corresponding editor, Art Nexus, and has written for numerous
periodicals including Contemporary, TRANS, Zingmagazine, Journal of the West, Tema
Celeste, Art in Culture, Public Art, [Art Notes], Art Map, Flash Art, and FRAMEWORK: The
Finnish Art Review.

Laura Rutkutė is a curator and co-founder of Vartai Gallery in Vilnius. She lives and works
in Dresden, Germany. In collaboration with “Vilnius – European Capital of Culture 2009”
she curated the large-scale international contemporary art project ARTscape, involving
12 exhibitions of well known international artists. She was commissioner and curator of
the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, with the presentation TUBE by
Žilvinas Kempinas.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to:

Vilius Navickas, Mayor of Vilnius

Oskaras Jusys
Gintaras Babravičius
Paul Domela
Laura Grigaliūnaitė
Jokūbas Jacovskis
Romas Kinka
Inga Luskovic
Danutė and Alain Mallart
Laura Montvilaitė
Antony Pickthall
Daiva Parulskienė
Ernestas Parulskis
António Gomes de Pinho
Eugenija Sutkienė
Kristina Ulevičiūtė
Gedvydas Vainauskas
Donatas Valančiauskas
Carla Weaver
Edmundas Žalpys
and
to all our volunteers
6th Liverpool Biennial
18 September – 28 November 2010
<CityStates> Vilnius

City Without Walls

Laura Garbštienė, Žilvinas Kempinas, Žilvinas Landzbergas, S&P Stanikas

Contemporary Urban Centre

41–51 Greenland Street, Liverpool, L1 0BS, UK

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

Organiser Concept

Galerija Vartai, Vilnius Galerija Vartai

Curator Graphic Design

Laura Rutkutė, Raúl Zamudio Laura Grigaliūnaitė

Curatorial Assistant Artistic Editing

Augustina Matusevičiūtė Jokūbas Jacovskis

Design Photo Credits

Laura Grigaliūnaitė Tautvydas Bajarkevičius

Laura Garbštienė
Žilvinas Kempinas
Public Relations Kęstutis Kuizinas
Žilvinas Landzbergas
AZcommunications Augustina Matusevičiūtė
Airida Rekšytė
Gert Jan van Rooij
Patron S&P Stanikai
Andrius Ufartas
Vilius Navickas, Mayor of Vilnius
Editing

Supporters Joseph Everatt, Romas Kinka

Vilnius City Municipality, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, Cultural

Foundation of the Republic of Lithuania, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Published by
the UK, Vartai Gallery, Libravitalis, IGEPA group, Inga Luskovic, AZcommunications,
Lietuvos Rytas, The Lithuanian Youth Association in the United Kingdom. Galerija Vartai, Interse

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Publication © 2010 Galerija Vartai, the artists and the authors

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior written permission of the publishers.
 Embassy of the Republic Cultural Foundation of the
of Lithuania in the UK Republic of Lithuania

Ministry of Culture Patron - Mayor of Vilnius

Vilnius City
Municipal Government
of the Republic of Lithuania VILIUS NAVICKAS

INGA LUSKOVIC

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