GROUP SHOW / # (hashtag)
JUNE 29 - JULY 28, 2018

OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, JUNE 29, 6-9 PM

GALLERY HOURS: THU-SAT, 12-6 PM

Meno Parkas Gallery (Kaunas, Lithuania. Düsseldorf, Germany) and Sla307 Art Space (New York, New York)  presents # (hashtag), a joint exhibition opening on Friday, June 29th at Sla307 Art Space. The exhibition runs from June 29th to July 28th.

The title, # (hashtag) serves as a marker that promotes the extraction of moments from the unstoppable stream of time. It encourages a keen focus on what is important and to stay in touch, while fixating on the flashes of clarity and awareness. 

Hashtags (#) of the artists’ works begin to overlap, causing an extension of meaning and an introduction to new directions. The artworks selected for this exhibition represent a research process and search for a method rather than art production in modern vernacular.

Presented artists: AGNĖ JONKUTĖ (LT), ANGELA OKAJIMA-KEMPINAS (USA), AUŠRA ANDZIULYTĖ (LT), ROBERTAS ANTINIS (LT)

If asked, Robertas Antinis would say, “perhaps process will never end.” Once, artist was told by his father, Robertas Antinis, (also renowned sculptor and very important figure in Lithuanian art history)  to stop at some point and begin to embody the idea. But rather, Robertas Junior is interested in the creative processes. He is constantly researching his own fields of experience and that of others’. He is earnestly determined to never become the slave of pure aesthetics. He is dedicated to experimenting with materials, forms, as well as teasing and provoking his viewers. His creative work is quite often connected with language and meanings of terms. 

That is something in common with Angela Okajima-Kempinas. She is a ceramic artist gaining inspiration from the semantics of language and writing signs (in the Verse-a-tile series). Angela‘s conceptual works are made with brilliant, but not self-purposeful craftsmanship and glowingly clean esthetics, such as the white exclamation marks, which in a former incarnation were floral petals but in this instance, take the form of a human connection sign.

Aušra Andziulytė is a painter in every sense. From her life philosophy, perception, to her artwork, she continues her ongoing search for the special light sliding down the landscape. Her use of ripples of red and rust in her paintings are not depictions, but rather symbols taking root in nature. Aušra allows viewers to decode her work in their own manner.

Agnė Jonkutė also is interested in the use of light, not only in its image-revealing feature but on its physical effect. Light and time have become her paint and brushes. Agnė allows landscapes to imprint themselves on a paper. She chooses minimalistic, ecologic, environment, and human attitudes towards her creative work, using as little intervention as possible to allow life to flow in its own way.

These artists from different backgrounds and generations sit on the commonalities of contemplation and introspection, which brings forth questions of their constantly changing self, the analysis of signs, notions being born, and keeping to one’s individual method of identifying and capturing their self-moments in today‘s rapidly changing world. 

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AGNĖ JONKUTĖ 

Agnė Jonkutė (1974) - Lithuanian based artist, is represented in many exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad (Austria, Croatia, China, Denmark, Emirates, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Latvia, The Netherlands, Niger, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain). A. Jonkutė is known for her exceptional artistic thinking, which is reflected through her frugal ways of expression. This frugality (for color, quantity etc.) is a strict and diligent selection for substance in order to externalize desired feelings, relations, and states of consciousness.

I was wondering how to convey the landscape as it is, how to reflect its image on the paper… In 2001, in the camp “The Valley of Deer” I tried to depict the landscape, or more precisely, let it depict itself. I just put a sheet of a low-quality paper on the ground and pressed it with stones (so that the wind wouldn’t blow the paper away) as the natural parts of the landscape. Everything else was done by the sun and time. Since that time, I often depict other landscapes during my journeys. That is how “The Books of Stones” from the Southern France, Southern China and “The Book of Plants” from Northern Lithuania were created. I planted sheets of paper like potatoes in Liwa Desert (United Arab Emirates): I buried the bigger part of the sheet into the sand (because of the strong wind) and left it. The pattern of the sand was drifted by the wind, the uncovered parts were touched by the sunlight. After one week I harvested it, i.e. a real, drifted desert on the paper was created which I called “The Book of Sand".- A.J.

/ agne.jonkute /

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ANGELA OKAJIMA-KEMPINAS

Angela Okajima-Kempinas (b. New York) is a Japanese American ceramic artist currently living and working in New York.

BA, Columbia College, Columbia University. BFA, The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. MFA, Hunter College City University of New York

If spirits and souls took forms, what would they be? Beauty? A glow? A certain bulge? Can material objects encapsulate and manifest the colorfully dynamic and quietly focused energies at the core of life?

My works hover between painting and sculpture and are made with clay using ceramic materials and techniques. For some pieces, structural walls become significant, acting as a canvas for compositional arrangements. For others, the medium itself translates into a pseudo canvas.

In the "Verse-a-tile" series, text and language are used as abstractions in the form of Japanese words phonetically written in script. Unfamiliar languages are basically abstract sounds and texts. However, the moment an unknown word is translated and revealed, it instantaneously takes on a new force. No longer a mere intonation, it has the compelling might of meaning. 

After taking a ten-year hiatus from studio work to raise two sons (and realize that children and clay are uncannily similar - both are intensely time sensitive, require focused commitment, attention, and care, are moldable but only to a certain extent,) the works on display combine old and new works. To exhibit them together allows me to see, process, and think about my continuum as an artist.

The opening questions about how to infuse art with a sense of resilient life and poetic energy are an inherent part of my work process. - A.O.K 

/ angela.okajima-kempinas /

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AUŠRA ANDZIULYTĖ

Aušra Andziulytė (b. 1961, Lithuania) lives and works in Lithuania.

The sensitivity for color is one of the brightest characteristics of her creation. Her works are extremely subtle, reflecting the philosophy of light and deep sincerity. Her compositions also feature connection with nature while balancing within the corners of simplicity. Aušra takes a strong minimalistic gesture that manages to reveal the complexities of light and space. Through her work, she exploits landscapes that cannot escape her mind and reveals these images through her exceptional perception and constant seek to create space and light on a flat surface, usually on canvas or tin plates. It is spectacular how she manages to do this using laconic, careful speech of her expression and ignite a sense of light.

Aušra has lectured at A. Martinaitis Art School (painting and composition); has won residencies in Paris (2013, 2009, 2008, 2001), Finland (2006), Sweden (1999); and her works are in the collections of “Imago Mundi” (collection of works commissioned and collected by Luciano Benetton, Venice, Italy), M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum (Kaunas, Lithuania), Lithuanian Art Museum (Vilnius, Lithuania), Modern Art Center (Vilnius, Lithuania).

/ ausra.andziulyte /

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ROBERTAS ANTINIS

Robertas Antinis (b. June 9, 1946, in Kaunas) works in sculpture, performance, installation, and written word. He graduated from the Applied Arts School in Riga in 1965, and the Latvian State Art Academy in 1970. Since 1997, he has been a lecturer of Vilnius Art Academy and was a docent at the Kaunas Art Institute, as well as a member of Post Ars group since 1989. 

He is a brave innovator and experimenter, created objects, installations, performances, and happenings. This important movement in Lithuanian art was in motion during the time of increased independence, not only because of the new art forms but also because of the provoking feelings of personal and national freedom that were embellished in his work.

It is not easy to define Robertas Antinis in a few words. He is an interdisciplinary artist who combines drawings, sculpture, written or pronounced text. His creativity is in constant flux. Robertas Antinis is one of the first Lithuanian artists who started emphasizing horizontality of sculpture, researching relations between a flat surface and the form and tactility through which his artworks for the blind began. Expression, process, and sensuality take precedence over durability, allowing for experimentation with materials such as cotton wool, sand, glass, etc. He expresses himself by using shavings, broken and fragmented pieces while seeking to treat materials in alternative ways, For Robertas Antinis Junior the essence is to communicate, the link of human with human and human with object. The artist opposes stagnant and stereotypical ways of thinking. Robertas Antinis is also creating Artists&#39, books which combine the entirety of his expressive dictionary,  text as sound or narrative, drawing and form.

/ robertas.antinis /