Undercurrent is pleased to present Aidas Bareikis's exhibition, I work just to get tired. The installation is framed as delicate, and oasis-like through its devotion to repeated processes of subtraction, addition, and transformation. Bareikis’s work utilizes basic sculptural, pictorial, architectural methods, while also mixing different materials; altogether fusing into one complex entity.
In his own words, “The show at Undercurrent acknowledges the exponential dependence on the notion of vacuum, “I work just to get tired” refers to sculpture which renders its making process as an interpretation of sheer entropy prior to other kind of searches for meaning or form of self-expression. The process mainly consists of dissolving material into multiple parts, the criterion being low on the energy of relentless shredding of fabric and then somehow putting it back together or gluing small sticks to probable ”solid” structures utilized as “form”. Such linear behavior converges to a static equilibrium, producing non-formulaic forms of the lowest level of thought, eliminating other possibilities of “meaning”, rather than the drop of exhaustion. Residual references to “reality”, accentuated on the mode “environment” are scattered: bird nests, shadows of plants, lobster, mythical “birds head”. But everybody knows that “realism” has nothing to do with reality. Entropy does. Entropy is a new/old realism. Occasional intersections of industrial “found” objects intersect both; time and value - sudden entry into an aesthetic realm of the old oscillation fan, other lost objects lost a long time ago - and “found” again.”
I work just to get tired begins in Undercurrent’s descending entryway where several small wall pieces serve as a prelude to the work downstairs.
The main installation is in radiant color, consisting of about two dozen objects made from a wide variety of industrial materials: sticks, fabrics, plastics, ceramics, cords, electrical wires, straps, cables, strings, etc. All imaginable geometrical shapes and solids can be found overlapping, and morphing into one another. Many found objects or their fragments can be found embedded into larger structures. They add a cohesive narrative and surprise element to the whole work. Often with Bareikis's work, a unifying impulse comes from his background as a painter. Most surfaces are painted, stained, glued, sanded, pigmented, melted, scraped, stripped, dripped, sprayed, etc, as it were some abstract expressionist painting or drawing. Three-dimensional shapes aren’t accentuated, sometimes even denied, or even disappear. His color scheme of complex neon/ gray is another unifier that infects all of the shapes like a virus. The installation's architectural layout is composed of three six and a half feet tall sculptures resembling deconstructed painting-type wall pieces extending into the space. A congregation of about twenty, mostly skinny, pointy vertical objects is located in the central part of the gallery. None of them are taller than five feet. They are well interconnected with different wires, strings, cords, cables, neurons, hormones, and vibes radiating adolescent insecurity and fragility.
Aidas Bareikis’s I work just to get tired evokes an apocalyptic playfulness similar to the universe of Hieronymuss Bosch created testament celebrating postindustrial visual sin, and fun.
Julius Ludavicius
Animated GIF: I work just to get tired, created from installation photos at Undercurrent
