Publications
A divine margin of error
Tomas Pabedinskas
A divine margin of error
The book “Iš mutantų gyvenimo” [From the Life of Mutants] acts as the overview of Algis Griškevičius’ photography, including the artists’ first works as well as examples from his latest photo series. The sketch drawings that the artist used later to craft detailed compositions and stage settings are also in the publication. The juxtaposition of photographs and drawings becomes a hint of one of the most interesting aspects of his work – interdisciplinarity, which is linked not only to the conceptualism found in contemporary art but more to the traditional notions of art praising craftsmanship and uniqueness. Griškevičius, a professional painter, started out on his creative path by making paintings, then illustrating books and creating posters and scenography. Even when he uses photography, he creates more as a painter or sculptor. He sketches and designs everything in his head, and then later thoroughly stages the situations by taking pictures while also constructing decorations for them. He’s not limited by the regular position of an observing photographer; instead he actively plays the role of a creator by connecting different fields of art: photography, sculpture, and theatre.
On the one hand, his photographs seem to go beyond documenting the actual reality, producing associations with the history of visual art: the references to various art genres, hinting at the iconography of painting or even paraphrases of iconic examples in art history (the series From the Life of Mutants). That said, citations from the evolution of art and several mythological plotlines contrast with the routine surroundings of their staging and the unidealised bodies of posing people. Such deliberate contrasts become one of the main motifs in “Cirkas” [Circus], a photographic series that might look full of absurd components at first: the bulky bodies of the models stuck in poses defying gravity, sculptures of titans replaced by real people holding the roof of a Lithuanian farmhouse, or the first Lithuanian cosmonaut flying his wicker rocket. A similar contrast between the material and ideal world is also evident in the series “Zodiako ženklai” [Zodiac Signs], where “simple” individuals embody the mythological creatures that make up the constellations. These people pose imperfectly and listen to the photographer when he’s staging a scene. The same goes for the series “Ritualai” [Rituals] – Griškevičius doesn’t capture actions that carry the purpose of a ritual; instead, he plays with the ironic metaphors of everyday life and routine social interactions. The artist’s images have a tendency to interchange different world outlooks: mythological stories, icons of art history, and circus tricks that seem almost miraculous, become part of an existence that’s overly mundane. Photography is especially suitable media for this sort of flip in the world’s order. John Berger, an English art critic, believes that a photo – unlike a painting or a drawing – always points to an external world that exists outside the image and even outside the taker’s imagination. “The power of a painting depends on its internal references. Its reference to the natural world beyond the limits of the painted surface is never direct; it deals in equivalents. […] The language in which photography deals is the language of events. All of its references are external to itself.”[1] Because of the said qualities, a photographic image represents the visuals born inside the artist’s imagination and then inevitably links them to reality, transferring them from the idealistic plane to the material one.
The overlap of the ideal and the everyday worlds grants the absurdity and irony of the scenes featured in the photographs, all highlighted by the artist since he chose not to create a convincing illusion. Yet Griškevičius doesn’t really get involved with naive images, or those dedicated to entertaining the spectator for that matter. His works might provoke important and not always safe questions: can we beat the restrictions of a material existence? Do various ideals of human beauty and other sociocultural stereotypes have anything in common with reality? Is it possible to find mutual points between the earthly world and the ideal, archetypal one?
Similar questions, perhaps raised in a slightly different manner, can be found in drawings made by Griškevičius, serving as an initial visualisation of photographic ideas. The sketches portray various wicker objects that the artist creates using his own techniques – he uses these objects in his photoshoots, as well as in exhibitions as independent art pieces. The incompleteness of the drawings and their continuation within the photos and other art objects speak of an almost ontological transformation – the image born inside the artist’s consciousness becoming a reflection of reality, the embodiment of an idea within the material world. The sketches don’t yet possess a contrast between a realistic reflection and an unconvincing situation – this only becomes clear in the photographs, turning into one of the main traits of Griškevičius’ art. The drawings also don’t have any space for the emptiness that gets its form and structure from spatial objects resembling empty lifeless shells of unidentifiable (or not identifiable so far) entities. Without seeing any realistic reflections or facing any adversity by tangible matter, the spectator’s imagination fills the drawings with notional life, imaginary lives, even dreamlike stories. Since the artist’s fantasies and hands create the images, the nature and technique of these sketches don’t allow them to pass as realistic visuals. It’s merely a space for recreating archetypal images, for playing games of the imagination – the spectator becomes a player too, as he’s given the chance to complete the sketch in his head. However, the drawings by Algis Griškevičius provoked the late philosopher Leonidas Donskis to raise an intriguing question: “Was reality itself launched at one point, and can it ever be complete?“[2] In other words, can reality ever become perfect, ideal?
It can’t, at least not in Griškevičius’ photos. The artist’s works have an always evident, wilful, and purposeful “creative margin of error” – the images he produces never look perfect, they never convince the spectator, but they also never unmask the illusion at hand. The consequences of this “creative margin of error” are similar to traces left by a constant creative process, to the results of one stage or other, but not to an entirely complete representation of reality. This sort of creative process is almost a ritualistic one, mimicking the creation of a reality that we all know, and according to Leonidas Donskis, “unable to ever be complete”. Griškevičius chooses a carnival-like approach to portray the incompleteness of reality – he disturbs the common world order in his works and then offers irrational images (which seem absurd at first) to replace it all. But the intense atmosphere and festivity of the carnival, in this case, steps aside to let melancholy and routineness filter through. The archetypal images recreated in Griškevičius’ everyday surroundings don’t commit to transgressing cultural and natural limits within a typical life, nor do they aim to provide an alternative for our reality that’s far from flawless. On the contrary – it feels as if a world that was launched (and unfinished, according to Donskis) by God will have to be recreated by man using earthly means, knowing beforehand that this process is destined for imperfection. The works of Algis Griškevičius allow us to take a glance at the discussed situation from another perspective – they show us that even our prose-driven everyday routine belongs to the endless, mythical time of the world’s creation, to the present of a moment that is constantly repeating itself.
[1] John Berger, “Understanding a Photograph“, ed. Geof Dyer (London: Penguin Books, 2013), 20.
[2] Algis Griškevičius, Tada (Jonava: NoRoutine Books, 2016), 19.
Algis Griškevičius: A playing man
Nerijus Milerius
Algis Griškevičius: A playing man
In his early work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote that “the world of the happy man is a different one to that of the unhappy man”. At first glance, this thesis might seem like plain banality, but it actually functions as a link in the chain of Wittgenstein’s arguments. In an early theory, after setting a goal to create a stringent concept of language that could express the factual world, Wittgenstein clearly realised that things that no one can express in scientific language exist beside facts that can be verified by scientific methods. If we were to focus only on the factual plane of the world, we would notice that sunlight shines on everyone, happy or unhappy. But the limits of a happy person’s world are widened in such a way that he or she perceives it very differently. So, it’s not the facts of the world that matter, it’s their relationship to the world – that’s why sunlight for a happy person is not at all the same as it is for an unhappy one.
Going through the works of Algis Griškevičius over and over again makes me remember this proposition by Wittgenstein. Certainly, there are artworks that charm audiences using the world that the artists have created, along with the uniqueness and sophistication of the artistic language that is spoken. However, most often an artwork attracts us precisely because of its tactics to broaden the limits of the factual world, opening both the artistic and the factual worlds in the same way. So rather than isolated artistic tricks, it’s seeing the factual world as different and in a different way that actually charms us.
The rituals of Algis’ art-circus possess this aspect of expanding the factual world using artistic principles, and the audiences love it. The visual rituals and performances act as “fuel” for training the artistic imagination. Unpolished, rough, half-naked or naked bodies of men and women look commonplace, at times even insistently mundane. But the poorer the appearance of these bodies, the weirder and more unusual these rituals seem.
One time, in Paris, on discovering Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture The Nose (a sharp and long nose basically pierces the eyes of the spectators) in an exhibition space, I thought about a world in which all people had such long and painfully pointy noses. You couldn’t just wake up in the morning and turn to face your loved one, you couldn’t wash your face while looking at the mirror above the sink, you couldn’t put a sweater on the same way… Your physical world would probably not be the only thing that’s different – the entire perception of such notions as honesty, courage, and love would be unrecognisable too. “Tell it to my face” would no longer be a synonym for harsh truths since long noses would be piercing various faces all the time, “eye to eye” wouldn’t represent agreement, and the phrase “love at first sight” would lose its romantic spontaneity as a close glance would on some level be assigned a notion of violence.
Such an odd reimagining of the world inspired by Giacometti’s The Nose is in a way provoked by the works of Griškevičius too – the Lithuanian artist skips using transformed, hybrid bodies, and instead uses regular bodies for transforming, hybrid practices. A man in Lauknešėlis [The Carrier] carries a slim girl on a long stick; Išpažintis [The Confession] shows a woman pulling a ball of string out of a kneeling man’s mouth; while the photograph Vaikščiojantis padebesiais [Sky Walker] portrays a man on very high stilts. All of these images challenge the clichés of typical sayings and practices, inviting us to reimagine what it really means to wait, confess, swallow pride, mutter, feel overly joyful, etc. The mundane meanings start shattering and they burst out of the rusty old connections, whereas the fragments of various shattered elements now form new bonds and assemblages, the meanings of which we can only attempt to guess. Next to the world that we’re used to, the one we live in every single day, other possible alternative worlds begin to coexist, and their details are “smuggled” into our factual world along with new, freed meanings. A world where bodies and everyday practices are untied and liberated is a place where basically anything is possible. Anything. Meditating in water, digging deep in the ground while naked, putting a light bulb in your mouth, flying with a board instead of with wings, carrying a stone (or a man) like it’s a balloon, growing on a tree branch in the nude, and so on. The ritualistic practices of Algis Griškevičius and the playfulness of his fantasies bring us back to a renaissance-like existence, where the new model of an industrious world hadn’t been designed yet and the creative imagination was flooded with technological innovations and scientific and artistic inventions.
This renaissance carnival urges us to slightly modify the points that Wittgenstein made is his previously discussed thesis. If “the world of the happy man is a different one to that of the unhappy man”, then surely “the world of the playing man is a different one to that of the un-playing man”. And the visual rituals by Griškevičius prove it. His photographs are the evident manifestation of the playing man, homo ludens. Every game has its own nature that reveals itself when you start playing it rather than when you’re only observing it. That’s how the images captured by Algis work – they infect us with creativity, turning the procedure of observing into a training camp to broaden the limits of our imaginations.
A started and unfinished reality
Book “TADA” Publisher “NoRoutine Books” 2016
Leonidas Donskis
What could be more interesting than sketches which the artist abandons, which he never comes back to, sketches – or billets of future artworks – which suddenly become artworks in their own right? Can it be that Algis Griškevičius’ photographs, meant as prototypes for paintings, not merely capture the time of boredom, but also become a space for urban sculptures where banal objects seem to acquire new life?
These questions inevitably lead to other questions. For instance, are all of the works we consider unfinished (or know as deliberately or accidentally left unfinished by their authors) indeed unfinished? Unfinished in relation to what? The author’s intention? The object of reality itself? The work’s future perceivers, i. e. the ones who partake in its space and constantly reactuate it?
Herein lies the intriguing question: what does a started and unfinished artwork mean? Furthermore, we are compelled to answer yet another one: was reality itself ever started, and can it essentially be finished (or brought to complete perfection in the eyes of the Creator)?
The humanist circles which emerged in the Renaissance era changed all Europe’s perspective on the classical languages, rhetoric, art, literature and politics, because the notion of humanism had the idea of incompleteness of reality at its very core. In his Oration on the Dignity of Man (Oratio de hominis dignitate), the Florentine humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) openly set forth what was undoubtedly perceived as a horrible heresy in the Christian world.
He claimed that God had intentionally left his creation unfinished, having abandoned it as an open project. To make the world complete and perfect, which is a neverending work and an open project in itself, God needs a creative partner. It is the human who assumes the latter role. Not just any human, but the one who chooses the work of constant self-perfection and spiritual cultivation. Such an individual can be l’uomo universale, in the sense of this term used by its author Leon Battista Alberti, but at the same time he or she can simply be an artist.
Hence, being an artist automatically lands one in a started and unfinished world. By working on it, we create ourselves. The human life is an open opportunity for constant self-correction and compensation of one’s imperfection through creative activity. Since we are the intermediate link between the animal and God, we must constantly choose between two vectors. It is either degradation to bestial state or elevation towards God.
This is the essence of Pico della Mirandola’s statement: the human dignity arises not only from likeness to the image of God, but also from constant effort to overcome one’s imperfection by perceiving oneself and the world as an always open and uncertain existential and creative project.
We know that many artists consciously or accidentally left their works unfinished. Occasionally works remained unfinished due to a very important new commission which could not be rejected. That was the case with Leonardo da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi painting (stored in the Uffizi gallery in Florence). We know that the Augustinian monks of the Florentine San Donato a Scopeto monastery and church commissioned this work, but Leonardo had to leave to Milan on short notice and did not finish the painting. To me, this early masterpiece has always been among his most misterious works, much more so than the Mona Lisa – precisely because his Madonna Litta, Benois Madonna, Mona Lisa or Cecilia Gallerani will never let us into their space as finishers of the divine creation. Theologically or from the point of view of Florentine humanism, Leonardo might not have objected to that, but it is simply impossible for us technically – the works are too perfect to reveal a single prospect for future correction or alternative. Meanwhile, The Magi allow us to constantly partake in an open structure which contains endless possibilities for the completion and continuation of the work.
I could say the same and even more about one of my favourite Florentine artworks – the Masolino and Masaccio frescos in the Brancacci Chapel of the Santa Maria del Carmine church. Masolino and his apprentice Masaccio painted most of the Brancacci cycle in this collective early Renaissance masterpiece, but it so happened that they did not complete it. The cycle was finished later by Filippino Lippi, the son of Sandro Botticelli’s teacher Fra’ Filippo Lippi. Masolino and Masaccio’s unfinished project not only enabled Filippino Lippi to reveal his talent of a religious painter and fresco master, but also posed a question: how is it possible (if at all) to finish an unfinished work?
There is no answer to this question. Although we are fascinated by Filippino Lippio’s works in this cycle, we cannot know if it would have been even more interesting had the work started by Masolino and Masaccio remained unfinished. Just as in the case of Giorgione’s unfinished Sleeping Venus, completed by Titian (Dresden Old Masters Gallery).
Another category comprises intentionally unfinished works. Rembrandt left particularly many of them. Such a deliberately unfinished artwork compels us to not only symbolically do the remaining work and complete the piece by our participation and imagination, but also redefine the notion of an artwork and even art itself. And then, perhaps, the very notion of reality.
Hence, Algis Griškevičius’ urban photography is not merely raw material; it becomes an invitation to redefine boredom, the mundane, architecture, construction, the city, art and reality. The photographs turn into urban poetry discovering the everyday and that which must either develop into beautiful objects or vanish, but always has its future as an open possibility. We do not know which is better: temporary existence and disappearance or being an intermediate link between absence and becoming conventional beauty or even canon.
We do not know that. If we did, we would have no need for art, and it would transform into something else.
These photographs not only provoke us to decide whether we want to and are able to participate in the completion of the started reality (for what is finished dies and fades away). Each artwork contains the possibility of self-destruction and destruction of the world, thus these questions are far from being innocent. Who are we to say which fragments of reality or an artwork are valuable and which are not? Does it not resemble our confidence in knowing which life forms deserve continuity and which do not?
For all beautiful fragments of reality are similar, while all ugly fragments are ugly in their own way. For beauty is already finished, while its ugly masks conceal new existence. The question is how to discover it.
Algis Griškevičius’ works relentlessly tackle these questions. Let us remain in their space. Satisfying and convincing answers hardly exist. We would hardly become happier even if we got them.
Let us live without knowing them.
Modern Art Centre – about Algis Griškevičius
Modern Art Centre – about Algis Griškevičius
Open link
Games people play when they are being played with
Book “Mikališkių stebuklai”, publisher “Tyto alba” 2009
The shooting session starts with a curse: “Your damn photographs”, – says pani Aldona in the impossible-to-master tutejszy1 vernacular, bitterly seeing off the “session participants” and running after the scattered sheep. Meanwhile, these participants – mature men and women – are about to wade into the nettles, undress and squat down to pose, convinced that in this way they refute the Lithuanian folk wisdom that cautions one against wandering “naked in the nettles” at the minimum. Everything is possible when you do it with a smile on your face and see the absurd winking at you.
The photographs themselves, with their innocence and mild irony, wink at the viewer, and one couldn’t expect it to be otherwise: two men seated on a board and sawing a log with a huge saw remind of a familiar folk toy with two bear cubs. As we know, this toy doesn’t ride or do anything else that could be considered practical – it’s just a product of a folk carver’s engineering imagination, which condemns the two interlocked figures to saw that wood eternally.
In Algis Griškevičius’ photographs, a toy gets transformed into a big game played by apparently mature people, which is supposedly meant to trick the viewer, yet the mechanism of trickery is not hidden at all. Furthermore, the latter reveals that those involved in the creative process themselves merrily play photography: some joyously pose, the other, invisible, shoots them. The mutual benefit of art is evident: the scheduled time drags on in a more entertaining way for everyone.
In one of Griškevičius’ early photographs, appropriately titled The Director, the interdependence of the photographer and his objects is conveyed yet more explicitly: a squat naked man appears to manipulate the marionettes with his fingers, yet in reality the strings extend from the fingers to pegs hammered in the ground, so the actual question becomes obvious: who is really being manipulated here? Both sides are tied together by that tight existential string, forever bonded by profession and mutual dependence, and won’t grow apart if they want to stay in this sphere and retain the same purpose of existence.
The dependence is mutual. Algis Griškevičius is also tied to his pegs – not just the models (who are, in fact, friends or family members, and are available to him at no cost, since they are invaluable), but also objects of professional desire: painting, things “weaved” from wood or metal, and photography – the latter essentially unites all of these. Not just because the photographed objects – knives, rockets and scaffolds – first need to be created much like separate items, autonomously displayed in an exhibition. In addition, the photographs expand the space of painting.
It is strange that photography can expand the latter, since it itself is essentially tied to the image of reality, and Algis uses the almighty Photoshop with extreme caution. In painting, one can splatter paint and draw fish in the sky, but photography requires the imagined world to be put together in reality first, so that it could be reflected on the camera’s film later. The demiurge’s work, usually scheduled for weekends, is fairly exhausting after all.
As if aware of the Creator’s only essential difference from any other craftsman – the ability to create time, Algis Griškevičius proceeded to work on the Calendar series after the first photographic experiments. Initially conceived as light-hearted and playful, at present his Zodiac signs are something very different from an interior accessory hung in the kitchen. In fact, they have nothing in common with time, but fill the world with their odd anthropomorphic bodies, the additional attributes of which – the likes of Pisces’ wooden fins and Scorpio’s scythe – become not-so-necessary attachments: Scorpio’s female substance dreamily gazes at the sky, and appears far from being dangerous, while the very poses of maidens sitting on the bridge make them resemble live mermaids. The same bridge will later be occupied by apparently male birdies, birdlike primarily in the way they perch, while the nibs, made from osiers, will be merely hints of nibs, a possible evolutionary opportunity. The Zodiac is thematically continued by the Sharp Woman, a combination of a blade and scales: the female body becomes inseparable from its extension. It’s a bio-object like those created by theatre director Tadeusz Kantor, only framed within a photograph.
Yet even wooden or any other extensions of the human body are not necessary when the power of the word is employed: it’s enough to write “Virgo” in the title to make everyone believe that this is what the image really portrays, since the wreath-wearing guy with an ironically romantic look in his eyes suggests certain mythologems – Copenhagen’s Mermaid or a line from Pushkin’s poem: “[T]here’s a mermaid sitting on branches”. Algis enjoys mythologization, which is the underlying principle of his work. He looks back to the Bible and makes the demented Judith run around the village of Bijutiškis with an axe in her hands, so that a new myth is born out of the so familiar reports of domestic violence. He confines the Sphinx among the small village houses, squeezes the bodies of the Atlases into the porch of an old cottage: the Antiquity is here, in the countryside, and even though this juxtaposition of the “high” and the “low” makes one smile, in reality it negates the very notion of aesthetic hierarchies; neither Egypt nor Greece and Rome are superior to a village pond if one had spent one’s childhood near the latter. That is a perfect example of topophilia, love of one’s own place and even place in an ethnographical sense. If only Griškevičius could, he would drag that small homeland together with the house, well, barn, and pond along wherever he went, so that it would always be beside him.
The characters and their stories hark back to Algis’ painting, and that is where photography comes as close to the latter as it can: the colours in both images of different origin look identical, the soft light of the dusk favoured by the painter’s brush washes over the girl holding a stone in the photograph in the very same way. The only difference is that Algis usually portrays the city in his painting works, whereas he doesn’t even take his camera when going to it. His photographs require a wide and open space. Yet the figures seen in the photographs adopt and continue his paintings’ mythology so actively that one might have an impression that the artist had first painted and later “reanimated” his characters in reality, making them travel from one album page to another, and the distinction between drawing them with paint or with camera lens is irrelevant here. Aquarius the boy will become a man and will soar in the sky in a couple of years, while the Sky Shepherd, who used to herd fish, will later become the Surveyor, even though he will measure water (and the same fish in it) – quite possibly, together with the clouds reflected on its surface. The painting’s pilgrim will exchange the chair for mill fans in the photograph, and later will saddle a unicycle to perform a circus number (which is in reality an eternal juggler’s journey). The frozen time is not a stopped instant here; it is a way of life and a perpetual state of this peculiar toy-game-existence. The principal attribute that Algis endows his protagonists with is the myth. In the end, although the travelling characters offer surprising inversions and plot junctions, they cannot escape the space created by the director (or his subconscious). There are clouds and grass, and in between unfolds all this Bible of Mikališkės.
Another realm of being, already much more static, motionless and almost unrelated to mythical characters in the photographs, is that which is much less definite and intelligible. Even the titles reveal it: Swallowing the Rope, Getting Woody, Man with a Black Board, etc. These are utterly tautological, since they say exactly what we see in the images. Tautology does little to augment the theme – on the contrary, while contradicting our emerging thoughts (“what is the real meaning of this image?”), it creates a sense of something being wrong. This very confinement of thought liberates the suggestion of the image, since the plot is pushed to the background as unsound and intentionally incomplete: Man with a Black Board is spectacular due to its contrasts, while the plot is eliminated as such. It resembles a riddle for which the director doesn’t provide the answer – he only warns the viewer that not everything can be grasped. Something remains beyond, even though everything appears to be emphatically close, situated in the studio or some other more limited space.
I write “the director” consciously. Not just because Algis Griškevičius’ shooting sessions themselves resemble the process of making a film – cranes, props, shouts instructing the models to keep a straight face, etc. Algis’ photographic works themselves are still frames from a film that the viewers themselves have to create. Often a pose or a movement come by as the next-to-last sentence of an anecdote: this is Hitchcockian suspense, still tension, and who knows what came before or is to come after it. There is nothing worse than concluding an anecdote: the declining laughter leaves a void. Thus the Observers look just as comic as the characters waiting for the eclipse. Yet they also look just as tragic: a premonition of impending disaster lingers according to the viewer’s wish.
In one draft photograph a performer of the Mikališkės circus holds an upright staff, on which another acrobat “waves” in the place of a flag, although one can see the supporting rope hanging from above. Even though this rope will not be in the image after digital manipulation, what makes this photograph look beautiful to me is something that exists in its final versions as well – the disclosure of the mechanism, which reveals the creator’s evolution from the mentioned concept of the “director”: we depend on not only each other, but also the one who pulls the strings from above. The strings or ropes extend beyond the frame. When the Cloud Catcher attempts to lasso the clouds, he essentially throws a loop towards the impossible: a comprehension of what is up there. He is Mikališkės’ own astronomer Šmukštaras2, who can’t find peace of mind on the ground because he knows that there probably is something out there. He rises in the air as the first Lithuanian space rocket, manifests himself to a girl in the guise of a kite, glides above his homeland like Icarus – maybe that explains why in all of Algis’ photographs the homeland appears so small, as if seen from a bird’s-eye view. The previously earthbound world experiences an inversion; small mechanical toys rebel and rise up in the air – to question and try to comprehend the world. The essence of the timeless Lithuanian myth – the craving for rising up to the sky – is exposed: far from being a desire to overcome the pull of the Earth (the latter always persists, no matter what), it is a game turned into an existential myth. One can bear the earthly reality only from a distance, through aesthetic experience – not touching the ground and loving it from afar. Simple games become games through which someone might well be playing with us. In the photographs, the place of the photographer, much like that of the viewer, is clear – the gaze comes from the same direction. Yet even though the creator’s gaze here is purely directorial, manifested through the “actor”, the whole scene becomes an object in another director’s hands. The space surrounding the “actor” is activated, expanded and extended beyond the frame, augmented by our guesses and premonitions.
Something probably exists out there, beyond that space – something unknown, though possibly knowable; maybe a hope, maybe a reluctant wish. Something or someone this world is handed over to. The Big Viewer.
Vaidas Jauniškis
Circus
The photography of Algis Griškevičius is easily recognizable as probably the only body of work in this style in Lithuania. Its interdisciplinary nature is most memorable, related to traditional art forms such as painting, sculpture or theatre, rather than to modern art practices. Griškevičius’ photographs represent the end result of a long creative process, depicting complex structures and precisely engineered situations produced by the author. As a professional artist with a background in painting, illustrations, posters, set design, and creating objects of wood and glass, Griškevičius seems to apply his creative experience and craftsmanship to photography. The images portrayed in his photographs must have been born in the artist’s imagination, and realized especially for the purpose of the shot. In this, they differ essentially from candid shots noticed and taken by photographers in the natural flow of life. Griškevičius in this way transcends the stereotype of the photographer as a keen-eyed observer, choosing instead to play the part of the active creator, which enables him to unite different art realms. While this creative method is well-established in the international photography scene (e.g., the orchestrated situations portrayed in the photographs of Austrian Erwin Wurm or Japanese Tatsumi Orimoto, where people become sculptural objects of sorts), Algis Griškevičius is probably the only one to adhere to it in Lithuania. The creative outcome is just as unique in the context of Lithuanian photography. At first sight, Griškevičius’ photographs may seem full of absurd details: the looming bodies of models frozen in gravity-defying positions; the real people replacing atlantes bearing the weight of a Lithuanian log house’s porch roof; the man blowing at clouds. However, these and other seemingly nonsensical discrepancies in Griškevičius’ work can be easily “read” as meaningful signs which evoke existential questions. Can man defy the limitations of material existence and rise to the realm of dreams? Do the various beauty ideals and other social and cultural stereotypes men harbor have anything to do with reality? Is it possible to find points of contact between earthly and ideal “heavenly” life? Is it because most of us live our lives trying to answer such questions, that artists are able to convince their models to create a “circus” in the middle of a field? Despite being evocative of existential questions at a closer look, Griškevičius’ photographs remain studiedly mundane. The artist creates symbolically meaningful mise-en-scenes, yet their symbolism clashes with the ordinariness of the applied tools and the material character of the human body. The photographs emphasize the opposition of generalized philosophical meaning and the triviality of the symbols it is expressed through, thereby supporting the statement that dreams must always be realized in very earthly ways. This contradiction often makes us seem like clumsy, strange circus actors, determined to perform impossible tricks. The author of these photographs takes a similarly eccentric role in the Lithuanian photography scene. The conceptual basis and the irony of his works connect them to the context of modern art, while the tendency towards philosophical generalizations, visual metaphors, and rural motifs echo the Lithuanian philosophical traditions. This dualism may well be the most interesting feature of Algis Griškevičius’ photography, uniting local photographical traditions with a (self-)reflective view characteristic of the international modern art realm.
Tomas Pabedinskas
A city seen in a dream
The works of artist A.Griškevičius fit into the traditional boundaries of painting, yet express the spiritual condition of contemporary man. One can feel echoes of the past, as well as the accepted values and uneasiness of the present. The works are fluid and conform to the standarts of contemporary art, enriching the discoveries of the postmodernist period.
Within the frames of the paintings the artist attempts to capture the enigmatic forms of reality, existence. A city seen in a dream, or in a moment of painful relevation, the people of the city, caught in a moment of loleness… The empty city‘s landscapes. Tje architecture, the court yards, buildings that are being restored, the bridges – each seem to live a life of their own, independent of human beings.
All is concrete, detailed, material. The paintings are structured as a harmonious whole, complete, with stable compositions. The surface is created methodically, with small, precise brushtrokes, each detail is orchestrated; a gesture stopped in midair. Within this static stability lies an important secret without which the painting would be meaningless. There is no ramdomness in the world of A.Griškevičius, and nothing can be changed – the events cannot be altered. The painting is a statement of existence, and there is a little room for error. The paintings visually stun, and we find ourselves in a space where time has stopped, and the most important player is irritating, expressive light. It grabs a hold of reality beyond the mask of the visible and the familiar. The tension of the bright colours and the contrasting light suggest the formlessness of the artistic vision.
The visible world invites us to feel the metaphysical world. A.Griškevičius‘ works are many layered; concrete scenes become magnifying glasses for the hidden world. One also feels an indefinite sense of waiting. The painful harmonies and ominous seriousness are present not only in the motive, but also in the colours and style of painting. Various dimensions of reality are exposed, and we feel that the gap between existence and non-existence, the temporal and the eternal, is not so great, and these states or conditions are all within our grasp.
The artist expresses his inner world, which is often pain filled, calmly, without anger or aggression. His feelings seem to thicken the light and the colours in his works.
A belief in the power of harmony, trusting one‘s own intuition and experiences. Reality is as rich and interesting as the person observing it. This is all a part of the artist‘s craft. Artist A.Griškevičius knows that better than any of us.
Art historian Aldona Dapkutė
A Bit of Rough A PAINTER TURNS TO PHOTOGRAPHY
A fairly monotonous repetition of exhibition cycles is sometimes interrupted by surprises provided by artists, which equals the pleasure of reading an unsuspected denouement.
The painter Algis Griškevičius, 49,instead of a safe demonstration of his seemingly recognised painting, has put on a display of photographs in a small picture gallery.
Life is theatre
Algis Griškevičius is best known as a painter who occasionally creates sculptures. However, photography has always existed in his paintings. Not just because they look faithfull to reality (although the imitative nature of his paintings is a disguise), not just because they often give an impression of accidental snapshots, but mainly because the artist has used photography as a way of sketching and memorising impressions since the 1980s.
What is painted has been photographed beforehand. But photography is necessary not only to help the memory. It has become instrumental in the artist‘s relationship with reality.
As he says, ‘’Reality itself starts to dictate. One gets involved in that straightforward recounting of the story. There is no distance left.”
The distance is needed in order to transform a specific subject, to move it into the realm of fantasy.
“It’s more interesting for me that way. An atmosphere appears, a distance. It is a state of seeing some simple thing or a building in a dream, but the mood is somehow inadequate to that thing, for instance, horror. I have always wanted to connect them. There is a state of mind and a completely different object.”
If we invoked the spirits of Freud or Jung, the two experts in the human psyche would eagerly dig into Griškevičius’ paintings, sculptures and photographs. For simple things, so real here, often have hidden meanings that always point towards the imperfections, inabilities and fears of constantly dreaming human beings. But the highway in this direction is blocked by irony, which leads the viewer to a different kind of origin of Griškevičius’ world.
As he himself admits, this all started in the early 1980s at the end of Soviet era. “When I was young I used to sit and discuss ideas, with the writer Juozas Erlickas and the theatre director Eimuntas Nekrošius. Theatre, litterature and the visual arts merged in our fantasies.“
This instance was very important under the ideological control of the 1980s. Soviet reality could only be criticised or laughed at indirectly. Theatre with Nekrošius in the lead created a metaphorical language, a way of saying things by not saying them openly, and thus escaping the scrutiny of ideologues.
But unlike the creators of theatre, Griškevičius was always a nonconformist on the art scene. For instance, his works belong to the section for alternative Soviet art in the New Jersey Museum in the USA. And not only because he exposed the artifice of Soviet life.
He also rejected mainstream Lithuanian painting, which has always been tightly connected to some form of expressionism, and ,,literature” was considered to be a fault. On the contrary, literature, or the subject, has always been most important to him.
“Then it is unimportant whether it is painting of photography if there is a essential principle, an original idea.”
Thus there was something that displeased both ideologues and the artistic elite in Griškevičius‘ paintings. At first they look like naive, faithful representations of reality made to please people, those uninitiated to art.
,,As one of the starting points they used to ask me: What are you doing here? People won‘t understand. And then I thought it would be interesting to satisfy a wide range of viewers. An old village woman could read the surface, and then there would be layer for different levels of intellect. This is when I started using strange colour combinations, such as apple green for the sky.“
However, this pleasant, and distributing, if you think of an apple green sky, surface should not be seen just as a mask which the artist would throw off if he could. The present demands of the market also make artists wear this mask. This layer, or kitch, is where Griškevičius finds and places emotions, nostalgia for the primitive carpets explored so often as a child, all human sentimentality, which is simple, unintelligent, trivial, but universal, connecting us all. Then the artist started weaving or making “wicker” paintings from metal wire, as an allusion to the metal wicker baskets you can buy in a crafts market, just a different kind of meaning can spring from what everybody sees and takes pleasure in possessing, holding and touching. And it is kitsch that creates the subtle irony for those who know that it is kitsch.
Kitsch, which was „bad“ in Soviet times and apreciated in contemporary postmodern culture, is what disguises other meanings, all levels of meanings, in Griškevičius’ paintings. The straightforward nature of kitsch sometimes prevents the viewer from seeing how much reality has changed. A sentimental apple green sky is connected to an unmatching ugly building.
Then you notice that trees and bushes have faces, that a house makes love (with its other self?), that fish fly away in the sky or that landscape assumes the shape of a gun, a skull,a fish. But that is not all the unreality there is.
Often it is quite imperceptible, because it is created exclusively by light, the phenomenon, the discovery of which the artist credits to the prewar surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico.
Then it is in this light that simple real things acquire the power of existential symbols in Griškevičius‘ world, such as paper boats or airplanes, or anything from paper.
“Paper or anything made from it for me is a symbol of temporariness, and not even that, but of the change of meaning.”
When a paper boat is reflected in the water, it might become a Star of David, a religious symbol. And there is quite a number of those Griškevičius‘ paintings, sometimes obvious insertions into a “normal” scene, such as the replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” in a decaying house.
Sometimes it is not so clearly visible, such as the picture of an eye on a kite flying high up in the sky above the most derelict part of Vilnius, aptly called “The Colosseum”. The underlying, flying or hanging fish (“Pieta”) is an old symbol of Christ.
“I find this idea very beautiful, that the most silent creature in the world is God,” says the artist.
However, although Cristian symbols are frequent, they are just hints or openings on universal existential perceptions, a way to speak about the world beyond this one.
“I see those symbols and the Christian religion itself as legends. That’s all. A beautiful legend, useful,but no more.”
He only uses existing religious symbols instead of creating his own.
To Renovate the Flower
However, there is one thing which has become for Griškevičius as a symbol of his own. This is the constantly reappearing scaffolding in his paintings, sculptures and photographs. It seems that the artist wants to renovate everything, not only an old castle, but also a chair, a flower, a tree, a man, whatever. He calls it his idée fixe. It started from his painting “The Castle”.
“I saw so many meanings there, it reminded me of Kafka’s castle. It was phantasmagoric.”
From then on, his obsession has included not only painting this visually complicated, protective and at the same time threatening structure, but also making and photographing it. The artist, who has always used photography, makes every piece of scaffolding he draws. The act even resembles some sort of ritual.
“It takes a month to make the scaffolding, and then I photograph it in a few seconds.”
Perhaps this is why things hidden in scaffolding in Griškevičius‘ paintings and photographs seem not just to be undergoing renovation but rather waiting to be born, as if something so far unseen is forming underneath this elaborate shell or nest. Thus the artist nurtures his fantasy. And in his sculpture, scaffolding loses its original core, the object to be renovated, and becomes independent, a different mode of reality. However, with all his inventiveness, around the year 2000 the artist felt that something was happening to his painting.
“I felt that I could not go on painting as if everything was all right. A kind of energy was missing. I felt afraid. And I realized it was time to put those paintbrushes away, to stand down. But how could I do nothing? Then I decided to try photography.
This is how it started, and visitors coming to the exhibition to see the painter found a photographer instead, and a very unexpected one.
Objective instead of A Brush
The content of his photographs is not social. You will not learn anything about the hard lives of the poor, or find an answer to the riddle of the meaning of life. It is not erotic, although the pictures teem with naked bodies, or political (but, who knows, maybe these nudes might be past or future politicians?). Neither is it documentary (what is pictured is not reality) or intended to impress. In fact, these photographs are just short ironic stories.
Some of his photographs reflect what some people refer to with respect and others with scorn as “high culture”. This is a concept of the past, and it is from there that the artist draws popular images that have almost become clichés, and immediately merges them with the plebeian present.
The tired “Prodigal Son” by Rembrant is now replaced by a naked and pretty “Prodigal Daughter” who obviously did not wander off. St Sebastian now becomes the target of darts in pubs, not for his inappropriate faith but just for fun. The saint is shown in the same posture as in the Old Masters, the only difference being the smile instead of the expression of pain.
The smile distorts the understanding of all the images displayed here. Works that once shocked the viewer are now made joyfully banal, and become figures or fun or trophies, which is the case with the crucific placed among antlers, stuffed birds and various other animal skins (“Trophies”). A stuffed God is the only thing left over from religion. The consumption of “high culture” is washed down with beer.
Once lofty ideas are now materialized in a rough form. Coarsely made wings attached to a cow’s back are clearly wooden and not heavenly at all. Therefore, the cow does not become a muse (“Uncle Juozapas Watering the Muse” rather thank milking it, which would be more usual) and does not even try to express some mythological being, which in photographs usually looks funny in the worst possible sense.
The artist construes images that do not bring you closer to any noble experience or beautiful ideas but rather move you away from them. He clearly does not let the viewer in, but remains in the safety of irony. The artificiality of the situation and the exaggerated materiality of the props create absurdity and art are all absurd.
One photograph shows a man standing in a meadow in a posture that is almost identical to the old sculpture or Lenin that once stood in Vilnius, with hundreds of shiny orders, medals and badges collected over the Soviet period piercing the skin. Another photograph features a male making energetic strokes through wooden waves. The artist’s muse finally quenches her thirst with the absurd.
The photographic material itself is also a bit rough: the pink bodies of large men romping in bright seen grass. It represents the naturalism of the colours, a standart rural environment, and a domestic way of taking pictures. There are no subtleties when trying to “hear” the light, or radical angles, textures, shading or retouching.
Nor does the photographer relish the texture of a rusty bathtub showing two men playing in it with toy boats, which is so characteristic of photography.
A practically amateurish, only greatly oversized, photograph is one more layer commenting on a situation, not only showing the absence of criteria for professionalism and the presence of complete permissiveness but also enhancing the feeling of absurdity. A stranger to photography, the artist intrudes into a foreign sphere, destroying its canons, which he does with partial seriousness, seeking not to cause a revolution but only to have fun.
The object of most photographs, a middle-aged, large and balding (usually the same) man is the antithesis of “normal” photography which feeds on nice young ladies with additional retouching. Skin free of wrinkles, spots and cellulite is the most common object in photography. In Griškevičius‘ photographs bright daylight shows the body in an everyday pose. Therefore, it looks unnatural when naked (equally unnaturally pink), just as in everyday life people do not usually walk around undressed.
Thus, those rough, real and unnatural bodies combine into signs of the Zodiac, a fountain or a swing, and try to become symbols.
As a photographer, Griškevičius is a director. With the exception of a few “domestic“ observations, everything is a performance.
The photographs show a drama about everyday concepts, ghosts of the past and even, so to speak, the artist’s calling. I have a suspicion that the photograph called “the Director” depicts the artist himself. His fingers are holding the strings ready to manipulate the puppets, but the strings are attached to the ground. The artist, who is trying to photograph his own imagination, becomes tied to reality like a cow, while his muse makes unsuccessful attempts to take off with her wooden wings with holes in them.
Agnė Narušytė
Bridges Between Reality and Fiction
After the exhibition of Algis Griskevicius in Vasby Konsthall (2004) it became obvious from critical reports that works of this artist are understood and reflected in the same way as in Lithuania: The surrealistic effervescence spreading to all forms of artistic expression, literature, plastic arts, theatre, photography and even politics, bridges between the real and the visionary, has visited Stockholm with Algis Griskevicius due to ambassador of Lithuania Petras Zapolskas and Cultural Attache Liana Ruokytë. Multi-expressive artist Algis Griskevicius brings a theatrical spirit to every day usual objects placed in situation unreal, conceived by the sensibility of the artist. It is a dreamlike fruitful arrangement between the natural represented object and the subconscious mood of the artist. The intuitive appearance of the work leads often to an abstract dream. The distance between the image of the represented usual-banal object ant the intellectual creativity of the artist is given by the fact that Algis conceives at first the final work before starting producing it on canvas, with film or sculpture. The essential is communication, says the visionary artist, coming from long years of heavy political regime in Lithuania, as hit predecessors surrealists came out of the dramatic years of the First World War. Algis insists upon the importance of communication, also with materials, among other colours witch have their own powers of life. The work of art without dramatic elements is flat.
Griskevicius – A Contemporary Surrealist’ (Ditt & Datt, 2004 Stockholm)
Alexander Scarlat
Who leads in a desert. Dreams and speculations
Who leads in a desert. Dreams and speculations
Juozas ERLICKAS
Extremely popular Lithuanian satirical poet, dramatist and prose writer
1. Algis Algis Griškevičius a famous Lithuanian painter of the 20th and 21st centuries, both a realist, idealist and moralist, and marine painter too. On other occasions – an educator, spiritual leader, father and son.
2. His youth was difficult, but Algis realized early enough that a brush is somewhat lighter than a spade.
3. His creative path, cutting through different historical epochs, has been dramatic and rough. Having risen during the years of the cold war, it has since descended upon the hot spots of our planet (Paris… Rio… certain districts in Amsterdam…). Having crossed deserted wastelands and walked through brimstone-smelling crowded cities, Algis has entered the realm of historical advancement and, with a single brushstroke, has wiped all the communist scurf off the Earth as well as some other planets (mad doves of peace… gardens blooming on Mars…) to reveal the primeval beauty of the universe (darkness). Today, Algis’ paintings fill up all the gaps in the landscape of the world and culture.
4. His talent was conceived among the people and started blooming together with them – over a glass of red wine. It ripened in the Red Army, though. It was Algis’ posters that ruined the high standing of the Soviet military forces and helped Gorbie come to power. Gorbie then ruined the Berlin wall. After that, everyone has been ruining whatever he or she wants, according to personal taste…
5. His paintings are suffused with a certain mysterious light that every person of a nobler soul keeps dashing to, even though no one is ever destined to reach it while alive. How does this unearthly light find its way to Algis’ paintings? The painter says it is simple: I breathe and here it is. This says a lot about his talent, but does not really help the countless troops of his pupils and admirers.
6. “I was fortunate to observe the creative process…
In the beginning, he created a frame and a canvas. The canvas was bare and the frame unpainted; only smoke from a cigarette was fluttering over the easel. Next he said, “Let there be light!” And there was light. He then separated the light from the darkness. All this happened on the first day of creation.
On the second day, he separated the paint, ordering one part of it to gather in the upper part of the canvas, while the rest was supposed to fill the sides. He worked this way for a few more days.
Six days later he had a painting fully created, and on the seventh day he rested, drank vodka, and laughed.” (From the memoirs of Marie Sklodowska-Curie).
7. On this side of the light there is a collapsing and disintegrating world lost in scaffolding. There is no hope to repair it as the very foundation was laid wrong. But Algis – an idealist – a couple of years ago decided to restore Noah’s ark: according to him, the hulk that still sits on the top of Ararat is too capacious as nowadays there are so few righteous ones on this Earth, too few worthy of saving… Moreover, we can see one of them rowing a boat, trying to get away from the Ark, where violence, smuggling, and sex are thriving. This, alas, is our world… (“The Restoration of Noah’s Ark”).
8. The dinner in ruins (“An Ordinary Supper”). Everyone who can is feasting in ruins today. Only a tree, perhaps a rowan, which protects human beings from evil spirits, has escaped to the fourth floor and is reaching towards the unearthly light, reminding us that there is no happiness in this world. Beautiful things can only reside in the beyond. Therefore, it is quite logical that even in his workshop the artist carelessly throws cigarette butts on the floor and squashes them with his feet. There will be no beauty here.
9. Such is the reality, and the master does not attempt to beautify it, although he has frequently suffered for the truth. Locked doors, a broken torch, and a rubber stick that never blooms – all these are inseparable attendants of the tragic destiny.
10. And still, every pit prompts him to seek the heights. In every stick, upon careful examination, he sees the embryo of a bud.
11. “Veronica’s Dream.” Everyone in Europe knows of this girl’s tragedy. Those who do not, will at least recall Ophelia’s fate, although there are no records of her illegitimate pregnancy – the reason of Veronica’s untimely death. Algis approaches Veronica’s story in a new way. Drowned Veronica’s posture explicitly shows that she has reconciled with the situation. Colourful, obviously non-Lithuanian fish are letters from a repenting pimp and also a Green Card – an invitation to America. But Veronica looks away with disdain…
12. And the light… Underwater-postmortem light. You realise that the girl would not want to return to the dark abyss of passions anymore. I feel there is great educational value in this work of art, as it is certainly no accident that more and more virtuous girls (in London, Prague, Berlin…) are choosing Veronica’s way.
But why is this painting not in the album? Has the artist not painted it yet?
By the way, a lot of Algis’ most beautiful canvases are never discussed for the simple reason that they have never been painted. But is there any need to paint? Is there still anyone who fails to grasp the master’s vistas, even if they be limited to frames only?
Art critics from different countries do not necessarily agree on this point…
13. “The Country of Balloons.” The emptier the stomachs, the bigger the balloons – this principle used to symbolize the Soviet lifestyle. Today, in the flying skull of a donkey (a crocodile?) I can see both a vision of Europe itself and mankind’s dashing progress. Some of the finest threads still connect the sinister image of the ideal to reality, but there is no doubt: the skull will soon take off and carry the sublime spectacle to hell.
14. Ideals fly, whereas a beginning intellectual (“The Icarus Syndrome”) will soon break his neck. Sure, he does not lack determination but his body is already exhausted and the burden of the wings too heavy. The crisis and critique of a consumerist society – this is what a forthright, unsophisticated viewer would say.
15. Let him be. No one will be able to help those who cannot distinguish a Breughel from a bagel.
16. A flying egg, painted a number of years ago, when human beings (even in Western Europe!) were still interested in both starlit skies above them and moral laws inside them. Today, many of us would be repulsed by such a huge edible thing floating above the city with no obvious purpose. This is why Algis, an artist incredibly sensitive to human suffering, never exhibits this painting, featuring the egg and a few other objects, floodlit by a daunting pink light. There is also a long white stick further in the background – this is a fireball, straightened by corruption. The egg, the fireball, and a window on fire (on the left) – we cannot see any people in the window, but we suspect that they are sitting behind it (on the right), eating an omelette – all this creates an intense emotional field the hungry ones should avoid. Well, we can of course interpret the painting differently. Maybe it is not an egg, maybe it is a cloud floating there. However, this would be an interpretation of a well-fed idler, an art gourmand, alien to people on the fringe.
17. By the way, I very much doubt if everyone in Europe will realize why an egg, at least a sizeable egg, should be unattainable to a decent Lithuanian. On the other hand, one might slice off the upper part of the painting and explain it without the egg. Of course, a cultured person (and they are so few on the Earth!) would call this suggestion outrageous and unacceptable. I just wanted to draw our attention to the fact that even if we cut up the painting, its aesthetic power does not disappear. This means that one can find in Algis’ paintings that something that Chekhov was not able to find in human beings.
18. And this is only the very first and superficial layer of meanings! If we scratched off the paint, we would be daunted by a light space. Gazing at it, we would find even more food for thought. And for the soul. But even though he has blotted out this space with paint – maybe he should not have done so – the artist has not fully destroyed the existential potential that lies hidden behind it.
19. And what if we made one more step forward towards an even more profound understanding of art and got rid of the canvas itself? We would then have the frame, from which everyone could make crutches for personal use. Or maybe even doors! To leave and start a new life.
20. However, this is for gourmands only. But what about those who are convinced that art has to be “understood”? It is for them that Algis sometimes draws a TV set in a corner, and then everyone who comes to the exhibition can watch TV for hours and feel at home (“Patriotic Games”).
21. For the most experienced, those that purport they are no longer afraid of any kind of art, there is “Simply Maria.” An ordinary Lithuanian woman (but she can also be a Muslim) lingers on the roadside, a basket of bilberries in hand. The powerful of the world fly past in fancy limousines. No one stops. What do they, big shots, care about bilberries when supermarkets overflow with pineapples?
Two styles. Two lives. Two galaxies.
Some fly past all smug; others stay behind annoyed… And then look, skyscrapers start falling… This painting by Algis, a warning, painted a good ten years ago, was hanging conspicuously in the artist’s workshop. Anyone could see it. But did the special services pay any attention? Dream on! If they had, there would have been no 9/11.
22. There are no limousines in the painting, of course. The artist appeals to an experienced viewer, able to differentiate between van gogh and gauguin, durer and durrenmatt, chopin and schopenhauer, etc. For such an individual one thing is immediately obvious: if there is a road, there must be a traveller. And here comes the catharsis! If you watch the painting for more than 24 hours, you will definitely see an ominous black BMW emerge behind the slim woman’s back. A door slams and out come a team of nurses. Such effects can only be created by a great master.
23. The canvas “Aquarius” gives shivers. A child, a baby really, is carrying two of the apparently most beautiful Lithuanian lakes away – to Europe. This is what all those games that Brussels officials enjoy so much have led to! Having seen this nonpareil creation of his finished, the artist was so shocked that, hardly conscious, he outdid himself and painted something even more nonpareil (“A Vagabond City”). This time, a train is dragging a part of Lithuania itself. Now it was the Belgians’ turn to be shocked and they immediately voted for Lithuania’s entrance into the European Union – on condition that it remained exactly where it was.
24. But of course, it is the brave child’s destiny that worries the viewer the most. Believe me, the child is safe and sound! The artist always takes care of the destinies of the characters he creates. The child is now mature and a well-known dentist, Mykolas Y. Years later we encounter him in other canvases such as “Pilgrim” and “The Weighing of Salt in the Centre of Europe.” It is quite peculiar, but the artist does not place the dentist in a clinic. No, Mykolas Y. is looking around in the wilderness. It would seem that in the dentist’s opinion, ordinary natural field boulders are no worse than artificially grown tartar – or renal calculus for that matter! A new and incredibly brave point: even these days nature has a future!
25. “Corrida” leaves an even stronger impression. Painted in an agrarian manner, it aims to draw the Euro-Parliament’s attention to certain sore issues in agriculture. A few careful brush strokes here, a few lines there, are enough to reveal the uncanny tragedy of a Lithuanian (Slovene?) farmer. Even a Brussels official with his eyes always wide shut will be startled at the sight of the heady udder of a rufous cow. But why, instead of rushing to milk it, is the farmer holding a dirty rag in front of the cow’s eyes? Is he a clown? A sadist? A madman? Oh, don’t judge too fast! What is the point in milking these days? Who will care for the milk? Europe does not need it. Wine, blood, oil – this is what has value today.
26. Does the artist propose any way out?
The frivolous cow is curiously watching the rag and there is no doubt that she would be watching TV with even more curiosity, should a TV set be put in front of her right in the field. We could even bring one from a painting mentioned before! Having washed her eyes with the soap of operas, the poor thing would be able to escape from gloomy reality at least for a short while.
And thus we can see a fragile flower of hope breaking its way through the gloomy colouring of the painting – in a free country, everyone has a chance! No need to wait for favours from either Washington or the Vatican.
27. Is this not the reason why an ordinary village mother is sewing a vision of the motherland for herself and her family (“A Countryside Seamstress”)? The vision is quite beautiful from afar: on either side the river lie long fields of barley and of rye that clothe the world and meet the sky; and through the field the road runs by to many-towered Vilnius… But let’s enter one yard…
28. Eurointegration. An intellectual, incapable of integrating, has been thrown out… Others, still somewhat capable, are reaching for a bottle, hope in their eyes… Ruins, dirt, reek… Only the little ones are floating tiny boats, flying kites and still dreaming of hitting a big road… (“Coliseum”).
29. Will they hit? Will they strike at all? This is not a matter of human will. We can now see one of those who left the yard a couple of years ago, undressed and spiked with nails – the internet generation is having fun (“Sebastian”).
30. Now, let’s look at a girl who has just killed her mother’s cohabitant. She is still clutching an axe, perhaps her only comforter (The girl’s father, the peddler Kolia, disappeared in the red-light district of Amsterdam five years ago…). The guy’s slimy enticements are still ringing in her ears: “Come try, sweetie pie, come try…” he would be mumbling, a bottle of homemade vodka in hand (“Judith from Uþubalis”).
31. Then – sheer mockery – on a mountain, that is neither high nor steep, emerges “The Light of Hope” (very similar to a red light, by the way). Somehow, nobody is trying to reach it anymore, even though, judging by the worn stairs, attempts have been numerous. Infatuated by the sweet promises from the government, the poor things have slipped and slid into other paintings, maybe not even Algis’, to become gangsters and murderers, beggars and gofers. A hideous and depressive sight.
32. And still… If we were to widen this somewhat narrow painting at least a couple meters to the left and another couple meters to the right, we would see plenty of the most wonderful things: banks and holdings, mahogany parquets and supermarkets, glowing highways and fat but nimble men on the run to tend to their businesses… In other words, many paintings would acquire other dimensions if the artist added a sun in the left corner. He would not need much paint and the effect would be enormous.
But none of this is to be found either in this painting, or in other works by Algis. Why?
Well, obviously, just because the artist trusts his viewer’s sagacity and therefore can afford to leave a lot outside the frames.
33. One could go on and on about the splendour of his paintings forever, but no quill is capable of this. One should get a piano and start playing, occasionally touching the black keys as well. However, such a composer has not yet been born in Europe. Today a composer rings his own doorbell and nervously demands, who is there?
34. Because threats linger all around. It is not without a purpose that the artist wants to lock the city of his youth in a room. But the city – a frightening black drunken-eyed creature – is thrusting its body out of the canvas, threatening to devour the careless viewer – just like the fish, floating in ambush, waiting for colourful immigrants on both sides of “The Harbour.” An uncultured viewer will undoubtedly recognize political forces at work here, as well as their work principles and prospects.
But a more insightful individual’s eye will be able to pick out a lady in black, tolling the bells in the horizon. Don’t ask for whom…
35. It is even more scary to watch “A City on the Table.” Quite a few political bigwigs have already expressed their desire to purchase the painting. Some have ordered “Lithuania on a Spoon,” “Latvia on the Tip of a Tongue”… Alas, this is how art is understood these days.
36. Is this what the artist was aiming at? Oh no! A few important things on the table bear witness not to swallowing, but to the work that is in progress here. The “No stopping” sign orders you to work until you drop. However, the one who has been working is nowhere in sight at the moment depicted. This is unnerving. Where is he? Algis does not offer any answer, but only warns us that all those who think differently will inevitably be disposed of. You leave the exhibition unconscious, having lost your peace of mind for ever.
37. Well, actually, we can see a figure skulking off in the second ground (a snob would say, in the background). Perhaps it was he who was sitting at his desk just a couple of minutes ago, then jumped up all frustrated and left… Is there any lack of frustrating things in this world, things capable of throwing our sensitive (all Algis’ characters are immensely sensitive) contemporary off balance? Maybe his salary has been delayed? Maybe his boss has knocked out his front teeth and at the moment the poor thing is heading to the police, where he will lose the remaining ones?
38. In any case, he must reach the crossroad because it is only there that the power of the ominous sign ends. It is a pity that the painting also ends at the same crossroad and we will never learn what happens next. By the way, I have noticed that all Algis’ paintings finish this way – too soon – even those that are not framed.
39. I cannot say much more about that person in the background, except that he will not walk very far. It is difficult to meet a good man around the corner.
In fact, many of Algis’ paintings have thriller elements. The viewer’s strained gaze nervously slides from the left bottom corner up to the right upper corner without a moment’s deviation to one side or the other, even though this is where a gorgeous lover of art is probably waiting for his attention. This is bad, but good in a way.
40. By the way, it is quite possible that the “No stopping” sign in the painting actually says, “Entrance forbidden.” In this case, the interpretation of the work of art changes completely.
41. And still, in spite of all interdictions, the artist’s soul is free. Of course, pharisees used to reproach Algis: why did he still participate in group exhibitions?!.. Once the artist lost his patience and retorted, “But is this your business? Were you at my side when I stood up to restore Noah’s Ark? Even today, seven years later, the Ark is still in scaffolding. Is this your so-called cultural politics? Thus get lost all of you, you jerks!” The pharisees could only utter, “Master, you have explained it all, and so well.” No one has dared to contradict the artist ever since, and the pure ones have brought brushes and oil paint.
42. This is why some of Algis’ works are painted with oil. In the “Opel Kadet” format. These are obvious signs that the artist is trying to appeal to a Third World person, gnawing at a herring in a deserted Western European car cemetery. This is humanist painting.
Sometimes, pundits inquire whether the oil Algis uses is cholesterol free.
The artist is known to have said in response, “You fool! If your body stays healthy, your soul will wander in darkness forever.”
43. I do not analyse the colours and forms of Algis’ paintings on purpose. Good paintings do not need things like that. Indeed, the most splendid paintings of nature are not colourful. And if the artist occasionally dabs some paint on a canvas, it is only in order to say to those who are always in a hurry, stop! Those who can hear will pause, look into the depths and, startled, will drop a bottle, a knife, or an explosive device…
44. Sometimes at night the light in Algis’ workshop suddenly goes off. This means that the veteran is conveying his experience to the young…
But to the master himself all positions are all too clear! Therefore, we find him napping in a Biedermeier armchair more and more frequently. Still, his bad habit-addicted fingers are continuously crumpling and rumpling something… This is how – absolutely by chance! – the wonderful copper strings were born. There is no doubt that the artist wove his brightest fantasies into them: to live forever, to love passionately, at least three times a week… These strings are Algis’ most solid creations.
45. Those who want to comprehend the original idea of the wire strings must find the right end of the wire. Then they can unreel the whole thing and if the result turns out unsatisfactory, weave a completely new version of it. This is precisely why Algis never uses cheaper barbed wire.
46. Sure, many avant-garde artists, much more disadvantaged by nature than Algis, would try to shock the viewer by electrifying the wire. Algis does not do that. He relies on a stick and other tried means.
47. “Sometimes his enormous talent disturbs the painting process. But he should outgrow this predicament.” (Charles Perrault, “About him,” p. 454).
48. Algis is a born marine painter; this is why there are always opportunities for fish – even herrings! – in his paintings. Human beings are a more complicated issue. From time to time someone comes to Algis to ask him to paint his or her portrait, in which case Algis always demands the special services to gather enough information for him to decide whether the client is good. There is no place for bad people in his paintings. This is why we never see any big shots there.
But if – extremely seldom and only exhausted by tough circumstances – the artist paints a bad person, such a painting either lacks perspective or, by contrast, it is all too clear.
Once he painted a portrait: Earl Birmingham in the Gardens of Luxembourg at a banquet table. (The banquet was arranged to celebrate Lithuania’s entrance into NATO). The painter came to the Gardens so hungry that he immediately started grabbing and swallowing everything that was displayed on the table (beef stroganoff and Wellington, transparent slices of carpaccio, opaque pieces of bacon, both roger and francis…). The corpulent English gentleman started waning under everyone’s eyes. In the evening he was already so skinny that when the artist opened the door, the Earl fell out of the frame, excused himself and died.
This is quite usual in the world of art. Should we bother?
49. Algis’ answer is clear: no! There is this fantasy thriller, “Chickenpox,” quite characteristic of the artist’s stylistics. A woman of the Earth (a mother) has grabbed a spotted alien and is holding it by the leg. The world does not end with what we see with our two eyes, just as life does not end with the road that we walk along with our two (sometimes four) legs…
50. “What should we do, brothers?” viewers are frightfully asking each other in front of the paintings.
Algis Algis Griškevičius has said to a certain person from Zurich, “Do not fear. Believe.”
The rest is silence.
World According to Algis
Numerous pieces of wattle, handmade from copper, brass and wood celebrate painter Algis Griskevicius’ incessant desire to keep experimenting with new materials. However, it is undoubtedly not merely the artist’s keenness on radical experimentation or his creative exploitation of various materials and techniques that fascinate the viewer. True, the latter will be surprised by Griskevicius’ fondness of such a seemingly female activity as handiwork. Still, what is even more captivating is first and foremost the consistency of his experiments which allows the viewer to follow the artist’s train of thought as well as the slow movements of his characters, caught in a somewhat absurd earthly pilgrimage, or else, in the world according to Algis, a world tinted by autumn melancholy, where the paint of the houses slowly peels away and the living creatures are neither human nor beastly, but both. The copper-brass-wooden spectacle that the viewer is confronted with is neat but intricate. It traps the viewer’s eye in the maze of graceful lines and sleek forms. Griskevicius takes risks – he has chosen the materials that have too much power over colours and forms. Wood dries and changes. Likewise, one is never sure what colour brass will acquire when put into acid. Welded metal strings require space. This incessant fight between the artist’s stubborn hand and resisting material endows these works with vitality. These pieces of art leave a lot of space for improvisation, but at the same time they also play with conventions and the viewer’s expectations.
Austėja Čepauskaitė