WIDEWALLS /ArtVilnius 2020 Temporarily Becomes an Autumn Event /Elena Martinique

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/Carl Lee’s Las House video installation view at ArtVilnius art fair 2020. Photo by Laura Zaveckaite

This year Undercurrent is delighted to introduce to ArtVilnius’s audience a significant work of a Buffalo-based American artist, Carl Lee. His three-channel video installation, Last House portrays the demolition, or to be more specific, the last 16 minutes of the demolition, of a hundred-year-old single-family house in Buffalo, NY. The demolition is interspersed with shots of the peaceful, dreamy interiors from Carl Lee’s own house. Last House is an abstract structure that recalls tragedies like Macbeth. Reality at some point becomes memory if it can achieve this kind of transformation, as memories have a greater chance to survive. Last House is a real-time vanitas installation where time slips by, surrendering our memory to change. Lee appropriately shows that with every end is a rebirth, which he leaves to our imagination. Lee’s piece reflects and comments upon the world’s current situation of uncertainty and drama. It additionally symbolically encapsulates what the American Dream–family, stability, values, home, work, and change–can mean. 

The biggest art fair in the Eastern European region, ArtVilnius brings together contemporary emerging and established young artists and galleries. It has expanded over the years to become firmly established on the local and international art scene, now being visited by 23,000 people annually.

The project was partially sponsored by ArtVilnius Art Fair.

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