On Wednesday, April 2, at 18 p.m., the Vilnius City Gallery “Meno niša” will open the long-awaited exhibition “Sync” by artist Jurgis Tarabilda. Transforming the gallery’s spaces, the exhibition will act as a visual ecosystem in which canvases will connect into overlapping systems, thus negating the traditional concept of a work as an independent, closed whole.
As art critic Rosana Lukauskaitė writes in the exhibition annotation, “the boundary between digital and physical reality is increasingly disappearing, turning into a plastic, constantly reorganizing interface between signal and perception. Can we feel through the screen that streamer feverish? Can a cold network of pixels convey human fear in a war zone? Why do those three megapixels in the distance seem more significant than four up close? We are constantly searching for recognizable form, giving even random lines a face, even fragmented data a soul.”
In his works, Jurgis Tarabilda delves into the relationship between virtuality and materiality, the interdependence of abstraction and meaning, and the boundaries between reality and the digital realms, reshaping our models of viewing and understanding images. In the exhibition "Sync", the creative process itself becomes an act of synchronization between two different forms of visual existence.
According to J. Tarabilda himself, in his work he often focuses on the practice of collecting: for example, he documents phenomena that interest him – lonely clouds – or collects objects left behind by people – sheets of paper with pen tests in stationery stores. In the case of this exhibition, the artist collects intuitive drawings from his personal virtual space, which he describes as traces of touches on the screen.
"These are intuitive gestures based on automatic drawing techniques and created with a touchpad, drawings in virtual space, which are later accurately transferred to the canvas using paints and paint tapes, and the paint is applied with a roller," the author said about the technique of the paintings created for the "Sync" exhibition.
Gabriela Černiavskaja, the architect behind the Sync exhibition, got the idea to transform the gallery's exhibition spaces while analyzing Jurgis's works, how he talks about them, and what interests him. Based on these conversations, the architect formed a set of key words: digital atmospheres, "debesis", layeringThe information the artist was telling, as if "growing" on itself, reminded her of a constantly "loading" website.
“[While talking to the artist] I remembered the word ‘syncing’ (English: "synchronization") and like information constantly uploaded to Google Drive in real time – such a medium is never finite. In the exhibition, we wanted to “dig out” some of the spaces of the “Art Niche” in such a way that you would think that they could fill up like some not yet fully “loaded” internet page,” says G. Černiavskaja.
“Sync” is the fifth personal exhibition of Jurgis Tarabilda (b. 1992). The work of the graduate of the Department of Sculpture of the Vilnius Academy of Arts has been presented many times both in Lithuania and abroad. In 2017, he was awarded the audience prize in the “Young Painter Prize” competition, and in 2020, visitors to the art fair “ArtVilnius” elected him the best artist. J. Tarabilda’s works have been acquired by collectors from Lithuania, Latvia, Germany, JAV, Estonia, Denmark, UAE, Israel, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as well as the MO Museum in Vilnius. The artist's work has been successfully presented at contemporary art fairs VOLTA Basel in Basel (Switzerland), Positions Berlin in Berlin, Enter in Copenhagen, viennacontemporary in Vienna, Art Antwerp in Antwerp and ArtVilnius.
Jurgis Tarabilda's exhibition "Sync" will be open at Vilnius City Gallery "Meno Niša" until May 20. The exhibition architect is Gabrielė Černiavskaja, the graphic design was created by Marek Voida. The exhibition is financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, the sponsor of the gallery "Meno Niša" is Vilnius city municipality.
