8 February 2023

The City Passes Through Time: Mindaugas Navakas and Arūnas Gudaitis

The exhibition The City Passes Through Time at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania present two projects by two well-known Lithuanian contemporary artists, Mindaugas Navakas (b. 1952) and Arūnas Gudaitis (b. 1973) – the former’s Vilnius Notebook No. 1 (1981–1985), and the latter’s Vilnius Postcards (2009).

Both of these projects are considered to be of pivotal significance in the history of Lithuanian contemporary art, and the one of Navakas, also one of the first examples of post-modernist gestures and site-specific sculpture. During the period between 1981 and 1985, the sculptor wandered around the city and took photographs of representative and contemporary architectural buildings and industrial spaces. Later, employing photomontage, he created a series of sketches which went through the process of being etched on zincographic plates and then reached the printing house with the help of his friends. These prints, eventually bound in the first Vilnius Notebook, were first presented to the public in 1986 in Navakas’s solo exhibition at the Lithuanian SSR Architects’ Union in Vilnius, but the show only ran for a few hours (according to some sources, a few days). As a response to Navakas’s project, Gudaitis created the series Vilnius Postcards: more than 20 years after the “notebook” project was done, the artist “followed in Navakas’s footsteps”, thus providing an opportunity to re-examine not only the city’s urban situation, but also its transformation. The series was presented at the 10^th Baltic Triennial of International Art, Urban Stories, in 2009 (organised by the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius).

Both artists are known for their wit, which makes them a perfect match for an artistic dialogue. The joint exhibition, featuring the above-mentioned projects together for the first time, encompasses a wide range of themes: it presents the history of Lithuanian contemporary art and the city of Vilnius as a source of inspiration; it explores the socio-political issues of the pretext and context of an artwork’s emergence; it comments on the changes of creative freedom; and reveals the nuances of sculpture in the “expanded field” and its relationship with the city’s architecture (Navakas), as well as variations in the strategies of dialogue and appropriation as a creative method (Gudaitis).

This exhibition is not only retroactive, as the two projects are presented side by side for the first time, but also retrospective, as the display includes the originals of these works, i.e. the initial formats of Navakas’s “notebook” and A. Gudaitis’s “postcards” (exhibited under a glass enclosure, as a museum exhibit). It is no coincidence that the exhibition is held at the National Library: it is the only exhibition-hosting building included in Navakas’s first “notebook” (as well as in the second one (1988–1994)). The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Almantas Grikevičius’s film Time Passes Through the City (Lithuanian Film Studio, 1966), but “the city” and “time” here are interchanged, encouraging to rethink not that much the aspect of time, but rather the context of the city as a (creative) space in the broader field of contemporary art and in relation to today’s issues.

The exhibition will run till 11 April 2023 at the Exhibition Hall of the Martynas Mažvydas Library (3rd floor).

Exhibition Curator: Aušra Trakšelytė

Exhibition Architect: Gediminas G. Akstinas

Design: Vaida Gasiūnaitė

Textual Editor and Translator: Alexandra Bondarev

Organiser: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Partners: Vilnius Contexts

Navakas’s Vilnius Notebook No. 1 is exhibited courtesy of MO museum

The exhibition is partly funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.

Briefly about the exhibition

Date

21 February ‒ 11 April

Time

library working hours

Place

Exhibition hall, 3rd floor

Attendance

free

More information

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Organizer

National Library of Lithuania

Partners

Vilnius Contexts; Navakas’s Vilnius Notebook No. 1 is exhibited courtesy of MO museum. The exhibition is partly funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.