DEBUT EXHIBITION BY RIMAS SAKALAUSKAS: SESIJA – SESSION IN MENO NISA GALLERY

Thursday, 21 January 2016, 6 p.m., Meno Niša Gallery presents Sesija – Session, the first solo exhibition of one of the most talented video artists of a young generation, Rimas Sakalauskas (born 1985). Video works by this artist have gained great recognition in the Lithuanian and foreign art world, but this is the first time when they are gathered for exhibition in one place at Meno Niša Gallery.

During five years of cooperation with Meno Niša, Rimas Sakalauskas’ video works The Monument to Oil, Blue, Smoothly Evenly, Synchronisation, etc. became recognisable both in the Lithuanian art world and abroad. His videos were presented by the gallery mainly abroad: art fairs Positions (Germany), ArtMarket Budapest (Hungary), Art Moscow (Russia), “Y“ Gallery of Contemporary Art (Belarus), etc. The latest video films, mapping installations, such as Holographic Sculpture, The Session, Electric Light Evolution, were displayed at Art Fair ArtVilnius for several consecutive years. In 2013, Rimas Sakalauskas won ArtVilnius award for video mapping installation Electric Light Evolution.

Rimas Sakalauskas completed MA studies in photography and media arts at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and graduated the Royal College of Art in the UK with a MA degree in animation. The brightest debut of the artist was his audiovisual project Synchronisation created in 2009, which brought the author the Silver Crane Award. This work soon appeared in the collection of the Modern Art Centre ( Collection of Butkai) , was included in the programmes of 70 different art festivals (ranging from Vilnius to New York and Brazil), and won grand prix in more than ten of them.

Rimas has been successfully working with the best Lithuanian theatre directors for several years: Oskaras Koršunovas, Gintaras Varnas, Arturas Areima, etc. Last year he was nominated to the Golden Stage Cross Award for video projections to Onute Narbutaite’s opera Cornet (directed by Varnas) and play Together (directed by Arturas Areima).
Managing technologies with preciseness to relocate non-existing, visionary images into a familiar environment, Rimas Sakalauskas masterly absorbs into images with fully integrated sounds and rhythms. Music to all video films is created by young professional composers.

Factionary, mystic, often weird images are placed by the artist in the environment in which the strange bodies become real, and the weird picture acquires attractiveness. There are no people in his videos; all characters are inanimate objects, buildings or fabled black and blue bubbles settled in Pilaitė quarters in Vilnius, in front of the TV tower, or other associative and recognisable places.

Among other works, the exhibition shows video installation The Session / Posėdis, featuring a mixture of Greek classical beauty and wisdom, statics and monumentality, diluted with a dose of post-modern nihilism, anti-aesthetics, abomination, joke and movement. The work is inspired by E. M. Cioran‘s thoughts, “To write is to vomit your secrets“. This aptly describes the principles of Rimas Sakalauskas’ aesthetics. This video can be also referred to as abject, employing 3D projection mapping to transform the vomiting of blood into an aesthetic, even exalted action.

For the first time, installations, objects, holographic sculptures by Rimas Sakalauskas are showcased in one place at Meno Niša Gallery.

The exhibition is on till 8 February

Curator, art critic Sonata Baliuckaitė