Mala Gallery
8, Zamkowy Sq., Warsaw (Old Town)
September 2-28, 2003

 

 

 

Jurgita Remeikyte: "Strategies of the sight / for the memory"

 

 

ITHUANIAN photography is constantly winning wider recognition in Europe and it even strenghtened its position markedly in the last dozen or more years. It is so because of achievements of many artists who started their creative activity in 1970’s, 1980’s and even earlier. It would be impossible to omit the names of the two photographers who probably more than others have defined the high level of Lithuanian photography and have given this art in Lithuania a prestigious rank. Antanas Sutkus and Aleksandras Macijauskas, both well known abroad, exhibited their works also in Poland already in the early 1970’s. They not only enriched Lithuanian photography with their own works but also, thanks to their professional and social appointments, enabled start and artistic development of many young, promissing Lithuanian photographers. The other important factor was a well developed network of galleries, museums and international connections which were started and developed by art critics and historians, inter alios Raminta Jurenaite, Agne Narusyte, Skrimantas Valiulis and many others.

A specific role has played also the Academy of Fine Arts in Vilna, from which recently graduated many talented artists of the youngest generation. Their interests clearly crossed beyond classic rules of photography, they boldly embraced modernity and new technological means. They produce video recordings, installations, experimental films, mixed media works. Photography for them is one of components of their work or an element enhancing their creative statement instead of being an exclusive device for conveying their concept or idea. Such attitude characterises constantly growing group of artists circled around the Department of Visual Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vilna run by Alvydas Lukys.

Jurgita Remeikyte has graduated from this department and currently works there as assistant professor. Her works quite clearly indicate interdisciplinary character of contemporary art. She places a photograph in different context by using various substrata like ceramic materials, textiles. Photographs presented as series of stills become a component of a video film. In her realisations she deprives a photograph of its documentary character by reducing it to an aesthetic form which influences directly a process of reactivatnig already existing and earlier recorded reality.

The works of Jurgita Remeikyte by crossing beyond area of straight photography allow us to enjoy a peculiar power of an image that has been recorded, deformed and processed without use of digital techniques, the techniques which became recently too easy and too often abused process.

Marek Grygiel

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE STRATEGIES OF THE GLANCE / MEMENTO IMAGES

URGITA REMEIKYTE explores the experience of exposure to the glance and presence of the other, to the world looking upon you. She traces how the glance touches and transforms the bodies and their surfaces; how the act of somebody looking at them is received, absorbed and rejected by the things, people and their ambiences.

In her shots, objects and people, "covered" in photographic emulsion communicate primary movements, gestures, grimaces and situations unaltered by any plot. Instead her prints register the light falling on the surface encasing the space, somebody sitting at the table or shielding one’s face from an alien glance, somebody taking pictures, screaming, loitering on the beach or in the exhibition space… These are generic forms of existence in the world, the visualized phenomenology of one’s relationships with the surroundings.

One of the key instruments of this relationship is the camera lens, which imparts on the process of seeing a structure of the shot, transforming the visual experience into a frozen moment, a memento image. The artist not only makes use of the lens and photographic techniques, but also indicates its limitations. To transcend its boundaries, she embarks on other, non-photographic means: her drawings reflect the movement of the artist’s hand alluding to the photographically impossible physical touch, both absorbed and evidenced by the textures of net, silk or other fabrics. The print in such works is ‘submerged’ beneath the surface of the image as the way of seeing and perceiving the world. However, it emerges not as a signature of technical device, but as an impelling metaphor. It is a glance, which is driven, lured and guided by the lens, and as such, it enables the expression of one substance through another, imparts the present dimension on the fragments of the past and keeps  spinning, on all artistic surfaces, the eternal dialogue of repetition and its impossibility.

Tojana Račiunaite

 

 

 

 

Jurgita Remeikyte
born 1973

Education:

• 1991-1993 - studies of Theology-Philosophy at the Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University
• 1993-1996 - studies of Arts at the Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University
• 1997-1998 - studies of Photography design at the Utrecht High School of Arts
• 1996-2002 - studies of Photography and Media Art at the Vilnius Academy of Arts.

Creative experience:

1997 - Photographic project  „Photo dance” „New Baltic Dance ‘97”, Vilnius, Lithuania
1998 - video „Tragedies”, Nordic and Baltic Youth Video Film Festival, Alingsos, Sweden
1998 - Photo installation „Still and moving (I, II)”, HKU Festival, Utrecht, The Netherlands
1998 - Photo installation in the exhibition  „New Kids on the Block”, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1998 - Photo project „Self-carrying” with the works of four nominees for the Piet Bakker Prize, Utrecht, The Netherlands
1998 - Site specific project „The Visit to Ting Chan, Amsterdam, 1998, November”, VDA, Vilnius, Lithuania
1999 - Photo installations in the Cluj National Museum of Arts, Cluj, Romania
1999 - Photo installation for the laboratory „Sound + Image”, CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania
1999 - Photo „For the Sea” in the exhibition „About That”, Aido galerija”, Vilnius, Lithuania
2000 - Photo project „For the Memory” in the Vilnius Gallery of Photography, Vilnius, Lithuania
2000 - Participation in workshop - symposium „Time Warp 2000”. Topolèianky, Slovakia
2000 - Photo project for the exhibition „Photoanthropology”  in A. Moncys house-museum, Palanga, Lithuania
2000-1 - Photo project „The Last Supper” for international exhibition „Innocent Life”, CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania
2001 - Photo project „Self Carrying” and „Elsewhere (I, II) in the exhibition „Acid Photo”, Siaulai, Lithuania
2001 - Collaborative project „TRANSIT FLENSBURG 17111” for the workshop - symposium „Odyssee 2000+1”, Flensburg, Germany
2001 - Performance „ExPosition” and audio project „Around...” for the exhibition „Self-esteem”, CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania
2002 - Drawings and photos for the exhibition „Fears vp. 2”, Vilnius, Lithuania
2002 - Collaborative project (action/audio installation/exhibition) and co-organisation of the seminar „ON SOMNOLENCY’ Symptoms and tendencies in Contemporary Art and Culture”, Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria
2002 - Exhibition „Apie mieguistuma (gryname ore)” based on the project „On Somnolency”, ARTeritorija, Kaunas, Lithuania
2003 - Individual exhibition „Perspectives” in A. Moncys house-museum, Palanga, Lithuania

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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