Fluid bodies 3/5. Sliding surfaces
Artists:
Robertas Narkus, Ieva Kotryna Ski
Artworks:
Council (+ new installation on site)
Robertas Narkus
Installation, 2022
Sinkhole
Ieva Kotryna Ski
Video, 2021
“Nemuno 7” continues its exhibition program with a new cycle of works on the expanded theme of ecology.
Especially for the opening, artist Robertas Narkus will produce an installation dedicated to tensions between humans and nature which will be supplemented with his project “Council”. While making “Council” the artist used objects, wires, ropes, building materials and remnants of artworks he collected in his studio to construct expressive still-life avatars. Perhaps these are members of an imaginary organisation, committee, or directorate, posing for a corporate portrait.
In his work, Narkus often draws inspiration from the world of business and start-ups. Contrasting its spirit of optimism and perseverance with the feeling of frustration and disappointment, the artist does not only create tragicomic performances, video works and collages but is also the founder or council member of many cultural and business organisations. There is a lot of humour in his work. However, this irony is ambiguous: the artist admits to sometimes becoming a rebellious screw in the neoliberal machine himself.
Robertas Narkus (born 1983, Vilnius) describes his practice as the ‘management of circumstance in an economy of coincidence’. Employing performance, new media, language and entrepreneurship he brings together the ordinary and the absurd to explore notions of technology and human desires. He exhibited, performed or had screenings of his works at the CAC Vilnius, XII Baltic Triennial, KIM? (Riga) de Appel art center, Stedelijk museum, Whitechapel gallery, David Dale gallery (Glasgow) and others. Narkus is the founder of the Institute for Pataphysics in Vilnius and artist day care center “Autarkia”. He holds an MFA from Sandberg Institute fine arts department, collective practice research course at the Royal Institute for Arts, Stockholm and pursues practice based Phd at Vilnius Academy of Arts. In 2022 Narkus represents Lithuania at the 59th Venice biennale.
Ieva Kotryna Ski’s video “Sinkhole” (25’30, 2021) departs from geological formations and the research of the artist’s grandfather, the geologist Vytautas Narbutas, inviting the viewers to follow the paths opened up by sinkholes. Eroded rocks melt, a cavity forms, the upper surface of the earth can no longer support it and sinks in. The resulting caves merge into interconnected channels, forming a fractured landscape that offers a different perspective on this natural phenomenon. At the same time, various forms of different-quality digital videos are used to explore the relationship with surfaces slipping away from beneath our feet.
Ieva Kotryna Ski (b. 1994) is a Lithuanian artist, currently based in Paris, where she recently graduated MA Creation as Research at the École Universitaire de Recherche ArTeC. Her artistic practice began with exploring the video-aesthetics of the telephone, the technological glitches that emerge from it, and the documentation of fragmented everyday life. Ieva Kotryna is also a frequent contributor to other artists’ projects as a video artist.
