The Straw Gardens, 2500-metre installation by Jolanta Kyzikaitė presented at Meno Niša Gallery
On Monday, 2 April 2012, 6 p.m., MENO NIŠA Gallery opens the Straw Gardens installation by JOLANTA KYZIKAITĖ, dedicated for the Holy Week before Easter.
Jolanta Kyzikaitė is one of the most promising young artists, the winner of the Young Painter Award 2010 and of two creative residencies to Vienna (Austria). The artist has already held three personal painting exhibitions. In 2011, works by Jolanta Kyzikaitė were successfully presented by the Meno Niša Gallery at the Second International Contemporary Art Fair ARTVILNIUS’11. Some Jolanta Kyzikaitė’s works have been acquired by the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius and Walter Bischop Museum in Germany.
The Straw Gardens installation, made of 5,000 plastic straws, is the latest work by Jolanta Kyzikaitė.
“I preferred plastic straws to natural ones in my work. What’s important is the phrasing – the straw gardens. The viewer would expect a traditional phenomenon. So, the name plastic straw gardens would be more precise in this case. I think this perfectly describes our current understanding of holidays. At first glance, it seems that we keep celebrating the same holidays that have been traditionally celebrated for many years. But today’s holidays lack naturalness and essence. All what’s left (or has developed), is “the glance side” – buying presents and decorating homes just for “the beautiful surface”. This has never been the case in traditional Lithuanian homes where everything had its own meaning. Turning round this way, the straw gardens demonstrate the gallery visitors the change of our feast and cultural table” – describes her recent work Jolanta Kyzikaitė.
The Straw Gardens will fill up the entire exposition hall of the gallery. Repeating the ancient traditions, after four months of intense weaving of the gardens, the artist has given sense to waiting for holidays and turned the process into an artistic action. Tradition – commerce – art. These issues are everyone’s concern. Is the tradition becoming the exhibit? Not very traditional, the weaned gardens of Jolanta Kyzikaitė will be exposed at the Meno Niša Gallery for the whole week before Easter. The exhibition is open till 10 April.