Prof. Ph. D. Remigijus Venckus BREATHING. FRESH AIR
18 February 2020 – 15 March 2020
’BREATHING. FRESH AIR’ is a new art exhibition of a well-known Lithuanian media artist Prof. Ph. D. Remigijus Venckus
Idea: Until my 28 birthday I never walked in the mountains as I was wondering that it might be dangerous for me. Now, I understand that mountains had waited for me till my first trip to Slovakia in 2013. After climbing the Tatr peaks I changed my mind and understood that the peaks are an amazing masterpiece of the Earth. Right now, I wish to feel a mount ground where I have never been before; I wish to have deeper breaths and feel my lungs moving.
In 2018 I went to Georgia and walked in the caves of mountains. When I got inside, I breathed slowly and deeply, I listened to an echo and felt myself as a man finding himself in an undiscovered galaxy. I understood that time and space had disappeared; they had not been highlighted by the people all the time: I am not important, my job is not important, my mother standing behind me is not important either. A human’s reasonable voice was unsuccessfully trying to find an explanation for the order of things. A human’s logic was not relevant at the moment, the importance of Being seemed to belong to the nature and the God… or the God embodied in the nature. Our lives seemed just a millisecond in the eyes of Universe.
To be face-to-face with nature provoked me to understand how temporary, microscopical and even ephemeral everything seems to be. Some positive feelings were dancing and inner voices were calming me. I had never met such a beautiful and miraculous piece of nature. My life’s sharp noises just got out at the moment and I had no any idea what to expect from life in the future. I found myself in the time which had just stopped to enable me to enjoy deeper breaths. My happiness seemed simple and similar to a buddhist monk’s.
In 2018, I drove through the Canyon of Montenegro and I saw how the landscape was changing during the trip. When I went out of the bus and turned back, I saw the huge buss become so small against the Canyon. I saw my mother’s fascinated eyes and heard her demanding voice: ‘Where is your camera? Why aren’t you shooting anything? Capture as much as you can and take them home!’ I had never seen my mother so happy… The extraordinary happiness had arrived at the time when we were standing to face the beauty of nature as a witness of some kind of our inner Universe…
In all my photographer’s career I have been searching and inventing different ways of artistic expression. I keep trying to go out of a simple mountain’s image not to be an illustrative artist. Any turn from an easily understandable view to an abstraction is a biggest challenge to me. This creative gesture is an action of the reality surface parring: I was doing my best to disclose the order of things, show the beauty of its mechanics and discover myself within new images, which I would like to share with everyone…
About the Artist. Prof. Dr. R. Venckus is an art critic and media artist. In 2014 he defended his Ph. D. thesis in the humanities, Jacques Derrida Deconstruction Theory in Video Art Analysis, at Vilnius Academy of Arts.
R. Venckus is Professor at the Department of Graphics Systems of the Faculty of Fundamental Sciences of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. He is the author of 18 scientific articles, 5 research reports presented in international conferences and 20 research reports published in republican scientific conferences. Previously he working as Associate Professor at Vytautas Magnus University, and the director of Creative Society and Economy Institute of Kazimieras Simonavičius University; he taught at Vilnius University, Šiauliai University, Vilnius Academy of Arts.
R. Venckus is also a media artist usually engaged in the art of photography. The main theme of creation comprises memory, time and personal experience as well as the male body and sexuality interpretations. In 2010 he represented Lithuania in the international erotic visual art exhibition (National Museum in Poland). He participated in 30 international exhibitions and 37 republican exhibitions, set up 50 solo exhibitions in Lithuania and 4 abroad.
R. Venckus is known in Lithuania as an art critic engaged in reviewing contemporary art exhibitions and writing about painting, photography and video art. His critical reviews on well-known Lithuanian and Western artists make an integral part of exhibitions held not only in Lithuania but also in USA, Denmark, Poland, Russia, Latvia, etc. R. Venckus is the author of 358 critical articles on art and culture.
The examples of exhibition’s photos: https://www.behance.net/gallery/84978679/Breathing-2019
Artist’s contacts: e-mail remigijus@venckus.eu; web www.venckus.eu
Organizer Lithuanian Art Museum Pranas Domšaitis Gallery
Partner of the exhibition Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
33 Liepu st, LT-92145, Klaipėda, Lithuania
+370 46 410 412
domsaicio.galerija@lndm.lt
