News
2021-06-18
Exhibition ‘Seas / Les mers' by SetP Stanikas at Klaipėda Culture Communication Center
On Friday, 18th June 2021 the exhibition ‘Seas / Les mers' of SetP Stanikas (Lithuania / France) opened at the Exhibition Hall of Klaipėda Culture Communication Center (KCCC) (Didžioji Vandens St. 2, Klaipėda). SetP Stanikas, National Culture and Art Prize winners artists Svajonė and Paulius Stanikai, present the project 'Seas / Les Mers' created specially for Klaipėda at the Exhibition Hall of KCCC.
The new SetP Stanikas project ‘Seas / Les Mers’ states a transgression of moral and ethical boundaries (the geological analogy of the term is “sea invasion to land”). In the field of contemporary art, the term identifies various socio-cultural aspects of transcending, breaking and overcoming boundaries. Large-format photographs, their own paintings discovered and restored 30 years later, photographs and drawings evoke a sense of anxiety, and being very open, the works seem not to allow to choose. You accept them or reject them. Either you participate in a shamanic ritual together with the authors, dive into the SEAS, or you stop on the coast of your perception and just look, see the images, but do not enter them.
The authors’ works are a film stop shot of lifelong experiences, each time expressed in a different media (sculpture, ceramics, painting, photography) and in its different interpretation. The artists choose the means of expression due to their specific distinctive features, but do not fetishize the media. Through them they strain the issues of power and gender, pop culture and mythological narratives. Each of their exhibitions is constructed in a new way, each exposition is like a collage of creative stage analysis. Therefore, do not seek aesthetic perfection or narrative consistency. Collage cannot be explained rationally, that is by form, colour or composition. The works of S. and P. Stanikai require subconscious perception. A lot of attention is paid to physiological motives and materiality, through which the relationship between the visual aesthetics and informativeness of the work is expressed,‘ says I. Kazakevičius.
'Seas / Les Mers' is the first personal exhibition of interdisciplinary artists in the port city, but it is not the artists’ debut at the Exhibition Hall of KCCC. According to I. Kazakevičius, S. and P. Stanikai have exhibited their works in the most significant KCCC projects: ‘In the year 2011 they participated in the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian project Aesthetics Vs Information, at the events of the Moscow Biennale, and in the year 2012, their works were presented in the exhibition of French and Lithuanian contemporary art exhibition Prestige: the Phantasmagoria of Today, which broke all attendance records. The famous French curator Nicolas Bourriaud, the author of the terms relational aesthetics, post-production and altermodern defining contemporary art trends, emphasized the contribution of Svajonė and Paulius Stanikai to the creation of KCCC in the essay written for the catalogue of this exhibition.'
