RÄ DI MARTINO / GIANLUCA & MASSIMILIANO DE SERIO / UGNIUS GELGUDA: Artscape: Italy

Part of the Vilnius – European capital of culture 2009 program ARTscape is a large-scale project that involves contemporary art, cinema and jazz, co-organized by some of the most qualified cultural institutions: “Kino pavasaris”, “Vilnius jazz” and Gallery “Vartai”. Throughout the year 2009 and in the beginning of 2010 these three experienced institutions will be presenting the contemporary culture scenes of twelve European countries, the cities of which are, were, or will become European capitals of culture. The three different media – art, cinema and music – will outline the diagrams of dynamic cultural processes.

ARTscape: Italy

RÄ DI MARTINO

GIANLUCA & MASSIMILIANO DE SERIO

UGNIUS GELGUDA

Curators: Luigi Fassi, Neringa Černiauskaitė

December 18th–February 20th

Opening: December 18th (on Friday), 18:00

The works of Gianluca e Massimiliano De Serio are an intense exploration of extreme feelings such as love and loss, madness and ecstasy. Through the investigation of socially excluded figures, such mental disabled persons, their trilogy constituted by A Star Love (2008), A Dark Love (2008), and Animalove (2009) investigates the absolute dimension of love and its transcendental nature.

Rä di Martino’s practice conveys a complex reflection on the notion of time and its flow by exploring the logic of memory and its social construction.

As part of the ongoing series Untitled (Marilyn) (2004-ongoing), the Italian artist takes every year a picture of Marilyn’s grave in Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, which is last home to several Hollywood’s stars. Personal homage of the artist to the figure of Marilyn, the photographs document the year-by-year state of the burial niche, by showing the flowers on it, as well as all the signs of love and affection left by fans and admirers on the grave.

The flow of time, as well as the accumulation of events in it contributing to defining our identity in the present realm, are the main features of Martino’s film August, 2008 (2008). The strategy of Rä di Martino shows how the flow of the headlines generates a background rhythm which inevitably accompanies our daily life. The dimension of past, present and future overlap thus in the impersonal voices of the young couple up till a point where they reach a sense of absurdum impossible to unravel.

Ugnius Gelgudaʾs 308 meter is a datum-point where a drama of a fictitious family, existing only in a film, begins or ends. In 308 meters of 35 mm film an illusion of a plot is created, which is made through clichés established in cinematography. The film analyzes the language of cinema itself, and its (un)perceived influence to our perception of everyday experiences. Cameraman: Vilius Mačiulskis. Sound: John Cage, Ugnius Gelguda.

Special thanks to MONITOR gallery.