Meno Parkas gallery was established in 1997 in Kaunas (Lithuania), and a second location was created later in Düsseldorf, in 2018. Over the years, Meno Parkas became one of the strongest contemporary art galleries throughout Lithuania. The main gallery’s aim is to represent professional Lithuanian and foreign contemporary artists in Lithuania and abroad, to boost creations from young artists and to make them participate in contemporary art projects.
Today, the circle of artists from the gallery is composed of 24 young and established Lithuanian creators.
The gallery’s activities mainly revolve around a variety of visual arts, the annual program consists of numerous international exhibitions, projects and events organized in Lithuania and abroad, as well as participating in the international contemporary art fairs around the world.
Focus - March 19 - 10 am
Meno Parkas
Arvydas Žalpys
Born in Lithuania, Arvydas Zalpys graduated from Kaunas Art School. He made over 20 exhibitions in Europe, and participated in over 150 exhibitions all over the world. He is the founder and president of “Meno Parkas”, an art gallery of the Union of Lithuanian Artists which promotes young contemporary artists. Arvydas Zalpys created, together with the gallery, the cultural exchange “Art Line” in 1999, which enables European galleries and contemporary art centers to meet annually. Since 2008 he also organizes the international contemporary art festival “Kaunas in Art”. The city will be the European Capital of Culture in 2022.
SCREENING:
Danube Forest Raft / Patricija Gilytė / 2019 / LTU / 6′
A barely accessible, wildly overgrown part of the Danube is flown over by a drone, along the stream of the river. The journey on the river proceeds diversely and stimulates a whole spectrum of associations.
The flight allows the viewer to see from new perspectives and comes very close to a physical experience of the water. The footage creates a portrait of the river as a documentary would do, and it also primarily serves as a metaphor for flying.
A fundamental intention of the work is to show the relativity of power relations within a larger system.
“ un altro … di vento, di cielo” / Neringa Naujokaitė / 2015 / LTU / 7’45
The video footage of the architecture intersecting with the landscape seems like a sequence of black-and-white stills merging rhythmically into one another. Neringa Naujokaite combines the views of the Insel Hombroich Museum near Neuss with a recording of a Polish choir accompanied by electronic sounds.
«Conversion» / Neringa Naujokaitė / 2011 / LTU / 11’29
Looking at the highways, crossings, bridges, and skyscrapers in the video “Conversion” by Neringa Naujokaite, you see veins and bones of a living organism, growing rapidly and pulsing with energy. The video material was taken in Chongqing, a megacity in the southwest of China by the rivers of Jangtze and Jialing. The shots from the city focus on the mazy system of its highways and bridges, taken without moving the camera and from distant points of view. Motion is added from the now tiny vehicles and sometimes citizens, passing through, like fleeting apparitions. The sound is based on Chinese contemporary music that reinterprets, with partly traditional instruments, the time-honoured music of China.
“Saga” / Žilvinas Landzbergas, équipe PetPunk (2005) / 2015 / LTU / 8’10
This animation is based on a wall painting The Road of Life from a children sanatorium Pusele in Valkininkai, made by Lithuanian graphic artists Algirdas Steponavičius and Birutė Žilytė in 1972. This artist duo was famous for their murals and illustrations for children books in a unique surreal and psychedelic style that took inspiration from archaic Lithuanian fairy tales and mythical motives. This work deteriorates along with most of Lithuanian postwar modernist interiors; The Road of Life is also in a poor condition at the moment. Several years ago the heritage of Steponavicius and Zilyte received quite some attention from the contemporary artists working with local mythologies and modernism. Zilvinas Landzbergas and the Pet Punk collective animated the motives of the mural to produce The Saga film.
Caryatids. Majestic / Židrija Janušaitė / 2019 / LTU / 7’27
The video film Caryatids. Majestic is based on the idea of Ancient Greece architecture, where sculpted female figures were serving as a substitute support for a column. These women carry baskets on their heads and also stand in a specific posture.
I invited few women to take part in my performance / video film. I asked these women to choose something important for them and put it on their heads and to stand in the posture of a Caryatid. For me it was important to show the majestic inner power of each person: the majestic power, when a person concentrates, when she or he can feel her or his own strong energy, own beauty.