What to see in the Baltics
Must-see art exhibitions in January-February, 2025
The year 2025 is already here. What will we be watching, and what will we be reflecting on in the first months of this year? Arterritory continues its series, "What to See in the Baltics." This is already the 7th issue of the project, which highlights the most interesting exhibitions in the Baltics, with each issue covering the next two months. So, what’s worth seeing in January and February?
Tallinn
Kumu Art Museum
Enn Põldroos. Dance Evening. 1968. Art Museum of Estonia.
Enn Põldroos: Museum of Obsessions
Until 13 April
Museum of Obsessions is a comprehensive solo exhibition of the Estonian artist and writer Enn Põldroos (b. 1933), presenting his works from the late 1950s to the 2020s. As an artist characterised by an adventurous nature, he has constantly changed his artistic style, ranging from the socialist realism demanded at the Stalinist art institute to surrealism. The exhibition explores Põldroos’s art through the images and motifs that have accompanied him throughout his life, and to which he has always returned in one way or another. These recurring “home ports” in his art sketch out the possible contours of the artist’s creative core.
Estonian art history has tended to regard Enn Põldroos as an adventurous artist: he has experimented with various painting styles and manners and the visual language of his works has changed multiple times since his graduation from the State Art Institute of the Estonian SSR (ERKI) and his first appearances in the local art scene in the late 1950s. He seems to constantly slip out of expected styles, avoiding becoming totally ossified: his “system is a lack of system”, as he has stated.
Eglė Budvytytė in collaboration with Marija Olšauskaitė and Julija Lukas Steponaitytė. Songs from the Compost: Mutating Bodies, Imploding Stars. 2020. Video still. Courtesy of the artist
They Began to Talk
6 February – 3 August
They Began to Talk is an international group exhibition, which takes the intertwinement of the body and the environment as its point of departure, in an era marked by rapid environmental change and inequality. Sudden changes in the physical environment, often caused by human activity, can evoke mental suffering in land-based communities. Stored in the body, this trauma is passed on to future generations, who perceive it as an interruption in their relationship with their surroundings. The exhibition brings together the practices of artists working in this region with those from indigenous communities in the Nordic countries, exploring the possibility of recovering and cultivating a sense of connection.
They Began to Talk continues the Kumu Contemporary Art Gallery’s programme of exhibitions on environmental themes, which began in 2023 with Art in the Age of the Anthropocene. Artists: Pia Arke, Eglė Budvytytė, Merike Estna, Sofia Filippou & Eline Selgis, John Grzinich, Joanna Kalm, Johann Köler, Ruth Maclennan, Outi Pieski & Biret Haarla Pieski & Gáddjá Haarla Pieski, Mia Tamme, Sasha Tishkov, Vive Tolli.
Tallinn Art Hall
Life Can Never Be Paused
Until 9 February
The exhibition Life Can Never Be Paused invites the audience on a personal journey where artistic expressions intertwine with existential questions. It is an invitation to pause, breathe, and view the world a little differently. The participating artists are Daria Morozova, Hedi Jaansoo, Lauri Lest, Maie Helm, Reti Saks, and Silva Eher. The exhibition is curated by Johanna Jolen Kuzmenko.
How should we act when the world presents more than we can absorb? How to find peace and meaning in a rapidly changing reality? The title of the exhibition Life Can Never Be Paused points to an existential truth: life has the ability to persist even in the most challenging circumstances. In this exhibition, Kuzmenko explores themes ranging from personal inner turmoil to global societal challenges. Special attention is given to a critical analysis of social media and media consumption, highlighting both the opportunities of the social media era and the pressure to express personal opinions on significant events, often quickly transforming individuals into “experts” in the field. The exhibition offers an alternative to the constant cycle of reaction and response: a space to pause, reflect, and feel.
Kai Art Centre
Anu Penttinen. (Dis) Comfort Zone 2. 2023
The Fine Lines of Constructiveness
Until 16 February
The main exhibition of the 9th Tallinn Applied Art Triennial The Fine Lines of Constructiveness features artists from the Baltic and Nordic countries, representing fields of applied art and contemporary craft, including a variety of techniques and materials. It showcases the diverse oeuvre of 27 solo artists and one artist group. “Constructiveness can be characterized by clarity, straightforwardness and optimality. It is aimed at development, creative progress, (re)constitution. Constructiveness may emerge when means are scarce, energy is low, or when the need to sustain one another has been acknowledged,” says the curator Maret Sarapu about the main theme of the triennial.
Many of the exhibited works use time-consuming technologies, which, in addition to highlighting the importance of sustainability, raise the question of whether handicraft as a soothing activity is a basic need, a luxury, or, paradoxically, both. The triennial includes textiles, glass, ceramics, jewelry, and installations – while many of the works are experimentations with a view of the future, they also value techniques from thousands of years ago.
Fotografiska
Feng Li. Butterfly Man, 2007. 冯立
Feng Li. White Nights in Wonderland
29 January – 20 April
With the Chinese New Year, Fotografiska opens an exhibition by photographer Feng Li titled "White Nights in Wonderland", inviting visitors to experience modern society through a surreal spectacle. Internationally acclaimed street and fashion photographer Feng Li has developed a distinctive visual language — his photos stand out in a world saturated with images for their unique ability to embrace irony and highlight the humor in everyday life.
The "White Nights" series is set against the backdrop of modern cities, focusing on the gritty, messy, and shamelessly artificial playgrounds of the streets—elements often cropped out in photos taken with smartphones. His vivid, silent images capture fleeting, mysterious moments and the absurdities of everyday life, evoking complex emotions under the bright glare of a flash that distorts the sense of time and blurs the boundary between night and day.
Feng Li skillfully employs technique, timing, composition, light, and color, with his signature mastery of the flash. He has a unique ability to notice and capture peculiar and surreal moments, weaving them together with explosive colors and evocative details.
Temnikova & Kasela Gallery
Joshua Citarella ‘E-deologies V (LBGTQIA-USSR)’ 2023, 92 x 152 cm dye sublimation prints on polyester
Anna Solal, Philipp Timischl, Johanna Ulfsak, Agnes Scherer, Joshua Citarella, Robertas Narkus. Don't take it too seriously
1 February – 10 May
Is there any sense left in an exhibition that is so self-ironic that it does not try to say anything to the viewer? Or is it just pretending to be ironic (quite in line with zeitgeist), thereby masking its direct statement and avoiding manifesto?.. Some political ideas contradict our values, and sometimes even sound absurd. When, to our surprise, people around us start actively supporting them, and we find ourselves in the minority, irony and cynicism become an easy way to cope with this situation. We start to make caustic jokes about it – and at first, ironically, we repeat after those with whom we recently radically disagreed. Over time, only a grain of a joke remains in the joke – and this effect is also called “irony poisoning”. David Foster Wallace believed that the post-ironic cynicism that permeates contemporary culture and politics is a barrier to establishing strong interpersonal connections. To overcome post-ironic impotence, on the contrary, naivety and sincerity are needed, which, despite the risk of being ridiculed, allow trust and empathy to return to the public space. In other words, rejecting sarcasm and demagogy in favor of honest, albeit uncomfortable, conversation can help overcome irony poisoning. The only problem is that this is not only a cultural task, but also a political necessity – in conditions when there is nothing left of politics.
Adamson-Eric Museum
Kaja Kärner (1920‒1998). Composition with a Clock. 1955‒1959. Collage. Art Museum of Estonia
Kaja Kärner: Friendship and Time
Until 16 March
She belonged to the generation of artists who should have entered the art scene at the end of the 1940s, but as victims of Stalinist repressions many of her peers were sent to Siberian prison camps instead. Kärner was spared and was able to stay in Tartu, but still fell victim to the Soviet authoritarian system: she lost her job as a drawing teacher and was expelled from the Artists’ Association. For the next nine years, she worked officially as the label painter of Tartu Kaubastu (the Tartu branch of the state organisation of trade).
In 1956–1967, when men were returning from Siberia, the former fellow students and like-minded artists, i.e. “the boys” who had survived the prison camps and “the girls” who had survived repression at home, got together as the first post-World War II group of artists in Estonia, known as the Group of 1960, named after their only uncensored exhibition, held in 1960. The group passionately searched for an unofficial artistic language and new modern means of expression, but also devoted themselves to preserving the attitudes and aesthetics of the free pre-war art scene.
Mikkel Museum
Ülo Sooster. Landscape with Eyes. 1968. Oil. Private collection 
Sooster 100: View from Private Collections
Until 5 May
Ülo Sooster (1924–1970), despite his short life span, left behind a legacy of thousands of drawings and paintings, which, despite the Iron Curtain, are part of the history of surrealism in Europe. The exhibition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Sooster’s birth brings together a selection of works in private collections by this uniquely playful creator, who was one of the most important innovators of Estonian post-war modernism. A gallery of self-portraits will function as an exhibition within the exhibition: it includes works from museums, and traces Sooster’s development from an underground artist excluded from public art life to a seminal figure in 20th century Estonian – and, more broadly, Eastern European – art history.
Dedicated to the artist’s 100th birthday, the exhibition takes a retrospective look at Sooster’s life and work: his early attempts at painting in Hiiumaa, his painterly period in Tartu under the influence of the Pallas Art School, the relief and serial works of his heyday in Moscow and the mysterious unfinished works of his last years. The view of Sooster based on the works in private collections enriches the artist’s current image by adding previously unknown rarities, confirming his reputation as a cultivator of cosmo-eroticism, radical for the Soviet era, and the creator of a distinctive artistic mythology built on the leitmotifs of the juniper, fish and egg. A total of seventeen private collectors have lent works to the exhibition.
Hobusepea Gallery
Photo: ”Alarming are the bells that echo in the landscape” Still from a single channel video.
Hanna Råst. Weak Signals
Until 3 February
Hanna Råst (FI) is a visual artist based in Helsinki whose work explores themes of memory, trauma, and transience through archaeology, ecology, and psychology. Råst works with lens-based media, sculpture, and text-based art. Her works often begin with archival materials such as photographs, found objects, historical sites, or narratives, through which she reflects on the impact of the past on the future. Weak Signals is Råst’s first solo exhibition in Tallinn.
Hanna Råst: “When we examine future threats, it’s essential to recognize their deep roots in the past and their far-reaching impact on what’s to come. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Nothing happens in a vacuum. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, scientists had long warned about the dangers of zoonotic diseases. Similarly, wars and genocides—whether near or far—didn’t begin in 2022 or 2023. They are part of long histories of oppression and power struggles. These events have been predicted, they have been visible, yet they persist in our blind spots, especially when swift action is most needed. In my exhibition Weak Signals, I explore how we might prepare for and find refuge in an increasingly unstable global landscape marked by wars, economic crises, and the climate emergency—issues that are deeply intertwined”.
Tartu
Estonian National Museum
Ryoji Ikeda. the critical paths. 2024
Ryoji Ikeda’s Solo Exhibition
Until 2 March
Originally from Japan and now based in Paris, Ryoji Ikeda is known for his unique style that combines scientific data and technology into contemporary artworks. He has received widespread acclaim in both art and electronic music circles, performing on stage and in exhibition halls. The Ryoji Ikeda exhibition at the Estonian National Museum is a rare opportunity to experience his world-class creations in Tartu.
Ikeda’s work has been greatly inspired by science and in 2014-2015 his residency at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) took place. His residency at CERN resulted in the piece supersymmetry, for which Ikeda received the prestigious Ars Electronica award (Collide@CERN 2014 Prix Ars Electronica.
In 2024, Ikeda is returning to Estonia more powerfully than ever before! Ryoji Ikeda's Solo Exhibition is part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main programme.
Kogo gallery
View from a solo exhibition To Pay an Arm and a Leg by Elīna Vītola, Kogo Gallery, 2024. Photo by Marje Eelma
Elīna Vītola. To Pay an Arm and a Leg
Until 8 February
“To pay an arm and a leg” – to pay an extremely high price – is a popular idiom in English; it is used in a wide variety of situations, and its origins are said to date back to the Second World War. It seems to equate apparently incompatible things like buying, selling and corporeal existence – because a high price can apply to many things. In the context of the exhibition title, the idiom asks questions about the value and experience of both art and life, including the cost of life choices. These themes are also important in Elīna Vītola’s other works, as captured, for instance, in the phrase “Common Issues in Painting and Everyday Life”, the title of her series of solo exhibitions, ongoing since 2017. In the current exhibition, she connects reflections not only on art and life but also on the past and the present, the personal and the collective, the known and the unspoken.
As a painter who departs from the usual paths of painting and works with a conceptual yet abstract artistic language, Vītola is searching, this time, for new ways to connect the content-based and the non-representational threads of art, by doing so, engaging its materiality, technologies and space in a dialogue.
LATVIA, Riga
Art Museum RIGA BOURSE
Bernar Venet. Difféo Gold 7, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, varnished
Bernar Venet. Painting: From Rational to Virtual. 1966–2024
Bernar Venet is one of the most charismatic figures on the contemporary art scene, making this exhibition an opportunity to explore not only the work of a unique artist but also his significant contributions to both twenty and twenty-first-century Conceptual art. The exhibition – which has been created especially for Riga and the Great Hall of the Art Museum Riga Bourse, – is being produced by the culture and art portal Arterritory.com in collaboration with Bernar Venet Studio and the Latvian National Museum of Art. ‘Bernar Venet constantly challenges the limits of his ideas, possibilities, life, and art as a process. For him, making art means articulating and transforming while involving various disciplines – science, mathematics, music, architecture, physics and geometry, as well as what is happening in the media space,’ says Una Meistere, one of the project’s curators.
The exhibition will include a total of 28 paintings by the artist, presenting both recent works and examples from the early stages of Venet’s career. The central axis of this exhibition is mathematics, which, in Venet’s words, encompasses ‘the greatest abstraction ever created’. He says: ‘I borrow these formulas, these “figures,” from science books. It sometimes happens that I add an equation to a figure I have selected, because it complements it, but also because it reduces the formal aspect of certain selected subjects and makes them more complex and less able to be immediately interpreted as a “beautiful image.” My subjects are chosen for their novelty, for their visual originality. And often because of their “difference,” their “distance” from everything I have learnt about art. The use of mathematics, in my practice, is meant to introduce another reality. This is a language that has its own formal peculiarities, its own organization, its own aesthetic rules. What interests me here is the richness of a proposition freed from the stylistic restraints of the kind of art that identifies with the great historical movements of the 20th century.’
Latvian National Museum of Art
Ludolfs Liberts. Portriat with Arch in the Background. 1923. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art. Photo: Normunds Brasliņš
Ludolfs Liberts (1895–1959). The Hypnotic Brilliance of Art Deco
Until 16 March
Ludolfs Liberts is one of the brightest exponents of Art Deco in Latvia and its most vivid manifestation is his stage designs. Without exaggeration it may be said that the 1920s–30s at the Latvian National Opera were the era of Liberts. Between 1924 and 1937, altogether he designed 43 and directed 12 productions. Liberts set the tone, influenced his colleagues and was at the centre of attention from critics and spectators alike. Master’s stage designs left no one indifferent: many were thrilled and applauded the set designs, others criticised and attacked him for overgeneralisation, flamboyance and excessive decorativeness.
Yet, from today’s perspective, it is clear that all of Ludolfs Liberts’ accomplishments in this field conform entirely to the style of Art Deco, which is characterised by an inclination towards geometricisation and ornamentalisation of forms, decorativeness, refined graphic qualities, a tendency to enchant and dazzle the viewer. Liberts possessed a phenomenal ability to sense current artistic trends, his sketches for stage designs and costumes show motifs favoured by the artists of Art Deco – skyscrapers, the cascading rhythms of fountains, zigzags and other geometric ornaments. Liberts turned to the heritage of non-European cultures, responded to the widespread Egyptomania and referred to the general fascination with the cinematograph, which influenced theatre and the leading directors of the time.
Kim? Contemporary Art Centre
Eike Eplik, Kristi Kongi, Anna Mari Liivrand. White Dwarfs and All Those Beautiful Nebulas
Until 26 January
The practices of Eike Eplik, Kristi Kongi and Anna Mari Liivrand do not focus on studies of cosmology, yet their observations of the world and contemplations about it mirror the processes taking place in the universe. They study and question the world they inhabit – whether that’s the natural world, culture, emotions, dreams or memories.
In this imaginary cosmic time-space, Anna Mari Liivrand takes on the symbolic role of the white dwarf. Trained as a sculptor, she works in a wide spectrum of media, exploring fragility, evanescence and melancholy in today’s society. Many of her sculptures take inspiration from sacral architecture, including graveyard fences and reliquaries, which are recurring motifs in her works, together with ornaments, decorations and readymades that she uses as anchor points in an ever-changing world. This surreal frozen landscape evaporates in the colourful shadow worlds created by painter Kristi Kongi, who is the nebula in this metaphor. Kongi’s artistic approach can be described as fluid and in constant motion. The motifs and compositions float and develop instead of rapidly changing. Her sight is fixed on certain horizons, which she studies with the help of light, colour and shadow-like forms. Eike Eplik is deeply fascinated by biodiversity and its complicated relationship with humankind. She creates sensitive and imaginative works full of personal mythology, using different visual expressions and materials such as clay and metal. Similar to the ideas of philosopher Astrida Neimanis about water-connected worlds, the artist takes a humble approach to all living things; in her art, strictly defined categories, hierarchies, genders and bodies do not exist. Her work can be described as micro-worlds, like bestiaries, inhabited by fantastic creatures in combination with plant forms including fungi, roots, and cones.
Zuzeum Art Centre
Malle Leis. Woman Leaving. 1970. Art Museum of Estonia
Unframed: Leis, Tabaka, Rožanskaitė
24 January –18 May
The exhibition focuses on the works of three Baltic women artists – Malle Leis (1940–2017), Maija Tabaka (1939) and Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė (1933–2007) – in the late Soviet era of the 1970s and 1980s. All three of the artists challenged contemporary art discourses through non-conventional approaches to self-representation, ways of creating space and reflections on being artists.
The title Unframed refers to the boundaries that all three artists crossed in their works, but also to a new interpretative horizon that their works create for each other. Moreover, all three artists produced a significant number of images in which the (female) protagonist steps out of the picture or turns her back on the viewer, creating visual metaphors of leaving or moving on to a new territory. In other works, the artists played with multiple frames that shift the perception of a stable and uniform reality. Leis, Tabaka and Rožanskaitė were all exceptional artists in Soviet-occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The education they got from art institutes in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius in the 1950s and 1960s was similar in terms of its ideological and aesthetic principles, but soon they all moved beyond those principles: not necessarily by directly opposing their current art discourses, but by navigating them in ways that shifted and blurred the meanings of seemingly straightforward motifs and gestures. “Unframed” has been created through a collaborative effort, with exhibitions presented in Tallinn and in Vilnius. The concept behind Unframed originated from the Kumu Art Museum’s ongoing research and exhibition program focused on Baltic art history.
ISSP gallery
Anna Maskava: Ancestral Body
Until 31 January
The hybrid, synthesized, and transdisciplinary art forms created by Anna Maskava blur the boundaries between nature and technology, two-dimensional images and processes, as well as the human and the non-human world. The artist plays and performatively intervenes in both nature and the material world, as well as in various media and technologies, revealing a multiplicity of nonlinear, interconnected narratives.
Anna Maskava (1990) is a transdisciplinary artist working in the field of visual arts, primarily focusing on the means of expression in photography and performance art, especially their synthesis. In photography, Anna works within the self-portrait genre and purposefully creates her own system of imagery and visual codes that allow her to transpose individual experiences into symbols, allegories, and metaphors.
ASNI gallery
Foto: Ansis Starks
Arnolds Andersons. Adrenalin
17 January – 15 February
The exhibition delves into the artist’s memories of growing up in 1990s Riga. The post-socialist era and its lingering effects on the present are interpreted through the lens of power and submission. Avoiding overt politicisation, Anderson reflects on this “legendary” decade of the region through a sexualised gaze, intertwining the beautiful and the ugly, the pleasant and the disgusting. Especially for the exhibition, scent artist Alīna Grīnpauka has created three fragrances – unique scent compositions aimed at uncovering associations with the culture, environment, and norms of the 1990s.
Due to a shortage of goods and services, a black market tradition flourished in the Baltic States during the Soviet occupation, laying the foundations for complex criminal networks in later years. Racketeering, corruption, mafia wars, banditry, where even a minor conflict could end in the use of weapons and explosives - this was the reality of the 1990s. Arnolds Andersons was brought into this world by his father, who then ran a foreign exchange office in Riga's Central Market. From a child's perspective, it was a threatening and fascinating environment, full of expressive characters who practiced a strict dress code. ADRENALINE, the most significant solo exhibition of Arnold Anderson's work in Riga to date, interprets the post-socialist era and its aftermath through the prism of power and subjugation. Avoiding politicization, the artist reflects on this 'legendary' decade in the region through a sexualized gaze in which the beautiful, the ugly, the pleasurable, and the disgusting meet simultaneously.
TUR_telpa
Photo: Liene Pavlovska
Liene Pavlovska. The Smoldering Flashes
Until 8 February
Liene Pavlovska’s artistic practice emerges from the intersection of personal memory, socio-political history, and spatial transformation, reflecting the complexities of being born and growing up in Soviet and newly independent Latvia. Her work delves into the residues of collective and private trauma, exploring themes of domesticity, surveillance, and the fraught interplay between family, state power, and individual agency.
Through large-scale, abstract installations that seem to have been wrestled from the subconscious, Pavlovska transforms materials such as vintage Soviet-era wallpaper and the paper used in old photo albums into evocative visual narratives. These installations incorporate abstract watercolors that evoke fleeting, dreamlike fragments of her past, mirroring the layered, often contradictory nature of personal and national histories. Her use of found materials and fragmented imagery critiques systems of control while gesturing toward the reclamation of space for improvisation and memory. Pavlovska’s art bravely approaches the shadows of domestic struggles, including alcohol and physical abuse, as well as the lasting impact of state control. Yet her work is not accusatory; it offers a quiet space for reflection and invites viewers to acknowledge unspoken truths that shape collective identity. The exhibition “The Smoldering Flashes” forges connections between the personal and the universal. Amongst the glowing embers and bright fleeting sparks of both personal and collective memory, Pavlovska invites the audience to engage in collective healing through recognition, dialogue, and the acknowledgment of shared histories.
LATVIA, Daugavpils
Rothko Museum
Jan Švankmajer and Eva Švankmajerová. DISEGNO INTERNO: Surrender to Your Obsessions
Until 16 February
While the globe is swept up in the celebration of Surrealism’s centennial, “Disegno Interno” marks the ninetieth anniversary of Jan Švankmajer, one of the world’s most influential surrealist filmmakers. “Disegno Interno”, or “internal design”, is a retrospective exhibition that pays homage to two creative greats, Jan Švankmajer (b. 1934) and Eva Švankmajerova (1940–2005). The legendary couple worked together since the 1960s, producing collages and assemblages, drawings and paintings, book illustrations and tactile experiments, medium drawings, and, most famously, iconic films.
“Disegno Interno” is a surrealist voyage into a world where the lines between animal forms, abstract drawings, and intricate book illustrations are blurred to near erasure. The only way to make sense of its internal design is through documenting the bottom layers of our deep subconscious – that is, by chronicling our numerous obsessions and recording our complete surrender to utter mental liberation. All the artifacts in this comprehensive display are the fruit of both artists’ obsessed imaginations and meticulous manual work – their limbs have moved, their minds have roamed, and the result is now on show and talking to the viewer. There is no single code to viewing and deciphering what you are seeing, touching, or maybe casually passing by. The only key is your surrender. It’s the best you have anyway. So come, surrender to your burgeoning obsession to experience the show!
LATVIA, Madona
MABOCA gallery Visuma Centrs 2
Photo: Līga Spunde
Margrieta Griestina. SPAZA shop
Until 28 February
Store SPAZA is a shop for the GolfClayderman brand, offering fashion and household items. A cybernetic fox and a bohemian bear work there. The first branch was in Africa, but it moved to Madona after ending a contract with the beverage supplier ‘Monster.’ The store is now near the brand’s subsidiary, the MABOCA Gallery Universe Center. Some keywords about the exhibition: street, friendship, computer games, love, crime, the freshest sports goods, chickens, and yo-yos. Paintings, sculptural objects, fashion, and business.
Margrieta Griestiņa is an active artist working in interdisciplinary art collectives, including GolfClayderman (with Aksels Bruks) and Shady Ladies (with Ieva Putniņa). She is also the co-author of the MABOCA festival and the MABOCA Gallery Visuma Centrs 2.
LITHUANIA, Vilnius
MO Museum
From Within
Until 31 August
An attentive and purposeful encounter with art has a positive effect on health. Works of art are multifaceted and integrate various aspects within them – which is why interacting with them has a healing power. Art speaks to us and helps develop resilience, the ability to cope with arising difficulties and act consciously. When we stand still and exist within our internal reaction to a work of art, we allow ourselves to open up to different interpretations and understand our experience in a new way, through different eyes. From Within is the first exhibition in Lithuania to combine art history and psychology on such a scale. By relying on these two disciplines, we encourage reflection on the multifaceted impact of art. The tools of art history help us understand visual language, while psychology guides us toward self-analysis. The questions that accompany this exhibition connect these two fields – like Ariadne’s thread, they help maintain a direction of looking and thinking, compelling us to open up and experience the therapeutic effect of art.
National Gallery of Art
David Goldblatt: (In)Visible Structures
15 November – 9 February
A major exhibition of David Goldblatt (1930–2018), one of South Africa’s most important documentary photographers, will be on view at the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNMA) from 16 November 2024 to 9 February 2025. As an engaged and perceptive observer of complex social issues under apartheid and after its collapse, Goldblatt embodied a critical view of reality in his work. The exhibition presents over one hundred black-and-white and colour photographs, offering a comprehensive look at Goldblatt’s oeuvre, including iconic images from his most significant series, such as On the Mines, Some Afrikaners Photographed, and Structures.
Goldblatt’s Structures, initiated in 1983 and continued for over thirty years, offers a visual history of public spaces and landscapes shaped in South Africa from the colonial era onwards. Through a series of images depicting churches, monuments, public buildings, and urban and agricultural landscapes, the photographer reveals how all constructions reflect the beliefs and ideologies of those who design and use them. As the author himself says, the way we shape landscapes, particularly through architecture and other forms, is ‘eloquent of the needs, preferences, imperatives, and values of those who made and use them.’ The exhibition section First Series presents photographs that brought Goldblatt early recognition. Although he began taking photographs as a teenager, he only devoted himself to photography professionally at the age of 33. At that point, he started working for corporations and magazines while also pursuing his own projects. On The Mines is the earliest of his mature series, focusing on the reality of the gold mines that formed the backbone of South Africa’s economy for most of the 20th century. Some Afrikaners Photographed reveals the everyday life of South Africa’s white, mostly rural, and often poor population.
Museum of Applied Arts and Design
7th International Biennial of Contemporary Jewellery and Metal Art METALLOPHONE. DON’T TELL ME STORIES
DON’T TELL ME STORIES,’ exclaims the 7th International Biennial of Contemporary Jewellery and Metal Art, titled METALLOPHONE. How so? Aren’t we always encouraged to keep coming up with stories and telling them at every opportunity? Don’t we always say that there is a story behind every object or phenomenon? And hold on – isn’t there a sense of an influx, even a deluge, of stories? Words are only needed when they add value, when they reveal, articulate, and shape. But if they flood us, there is a real danger of drowning. Stories can be redundant, forced, artificial, frustrating and suffocating, and there are so many things in jewellery that are beyond stories, yet they bring value and experience in and of themselves. Minerals and stones, materials that require our bodies and our touch to come into their own, natural and man-made forms that catch the eye without the need for explanations. Materials and processes have meaning and agency, and all of this can be understood without words. There is a huge difference between context, which enriches perception, and an artificial narrative woven from empty words.
That’s why the biennial is asking us: ‘Stop telling meaningless stories. Tell me things that really matter. Show me only what is necessary, what you feel directly, what you want to touch and experience without understanding. Tell me about what lies behind the stories.’ How do you tell stories without doing so? This question and topic are something of a provocation. There may be many answers. 130 artists from 30 countries talk about meanings and significances through images, objects, materials, and writing, arguing, teasing, and showing, letting the audience discover their own stories.
The Radvila Palace Museum of Art
NSRD: Information About a Transformed Situation
22 November –25 February
The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA), in partnership with the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNMA), opens NSRD: Information About a Transformed Situation – an exhibition dedicated to the legendary Latvian avant-garde music and art group Workshop for the Restoration of Unfelt Feelings (NSRD) and their associates. This exhibition, on view at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA until February 23, 2025, is the broadest display of NSRD's work to be organized outside of Latvia in 35 years and provides an opportunity for international audiences to be introduced to the recent history of Latvian underground art and its continued influence today. The exhibition has been curated by Māra Traumane (Art Academy of Latvia) and Māra Žeikare (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art).
NSRD, as an interdisciplinary group, was active in the fields of music, literature, performance and video art. The group was founded in 1982 by Juris Boiko and Hardijs Lediņš, who were joined by their long-term associates Inguna Rubene (Černova) and Imants Žodžiks. However, their projects often involved a much wider circle of participants, and not all of the projects developed by the members of this wider group – which included actions, design, architecture proposals and discotheques – can be linked to NSRD directly. The exhibition NSRD: Information About a Transformed Situation is focused on the various models of creative collaboration seen in the work of the group from the late 1970s till 1989. Despite the restrictions of the Soviet time, these activities allowed the introduction of cutting-edge avant-garde, new wave and postmodern aesthetics into the Latvian cultural scene. In the exhibition, the continuity of the legacy of NSRD is reflected in the works of the artists Maija Kurševa, Evita Vasiļjeva, Kaspars Groševs, the text group Orbīta (Semjons Haņins, Artūrs Punte, Vladimirs Svetlovs, Sergejs Timofejevs) and the band Alejas (Kirils Ēcis, Spāre Vītola, Reinis Žodžiks).
Meno Parkas Gallery
Intermediate Glooms
Until 2 February
The contemporary condition oscillates between clarity and distortion, where reality is mediated through layers of screens and codes. Rooted in the generational experiences of artists raised alongside digital technologies, the exhibition explores how these tools have shaped our understanding of reality, intimacy, and materiality. This examination naturally leads to the concept of intermediacy, which appears as an active and generative state rather than a passive absence. Transitional space materializes in the interaction between the personal and the algorithmic. In this state, perception becomes a field of negotiation. Digital interfaces, video game aesthetics, and generative processes engage with the psychological dimensions of uncertainty—an openness to ambiguity that enables fresh ways of experiencing and interpreting the world.
The artworks go beyond the limits of traditional painting by merging classical techniques with digital interventions. Through algorithmic inputs and projections that animate surfaces, the exhibition comes into state of being in-between. These pieces balance the interactions between mechanical detachment and the presence of human touch. Artists: Šarūnas Baltrukonis, Gasparas Zondovas, Emilie Alstrup, Sandra Golubjevaitė, Indrė Rybakovaitė, Clara Schweers, Klaidas Paškevičius, Andrius Kviliūnas, Eglė Marcinkevičiūtė, Andrius Zakarauskas, Adomas Rybakovas, Jurga Barilaitė, Neda Naujokaitė, Lukas Marciulevičius, Mantas Valentukonis, Emilija Povilanskaitė.
Galerija Vartai
Linas Jusionis. Dar viena palmė / Yet another palm tree, 2024. Acrylic, oil on canvas
Linas Jusionis. Resort
Until 8 February
Resort is the seventh solo exhibition by Linas Jusionis at Vartai Gallery. In this new series, the artist invites viewers on a creative journey filled with nostalgia, melancholy, and a rethinking of everyday objects and spaces in novel contexts. Ski jump towers, rising like minimalist sculptures within the landscape, evoke a nostalgic belief in rational order and progress. At the same time, they succumb to entropy, pulsing with bittersweet fatalism. This mood echoes in other elements of the exhibition: a solitary telephone booth set against neon letters, decaying ancient sculptures dissolving into a bright blue space, and an elusive detective-like figure – perhaps just an ordinary tourist –only implied through the abstract ends of skis. As we navigate these everyday spaces, seemingly random objects catch our gaze. Their images intertwine multiple contexts, prompting us to question why these things hold our attention and what meanings they construct. At the same time, there is a desire to move away from this excess of meanings, focusing instead on the image itself, the pure form, and compositional structure, surrendering to surface and experience.
Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum
Marija Prymachenko. Seagulls in the Boat, 1965, © Prymachenko Family Foundation
I Give You Sunlit Art. Maria Prymachenkoʼs art collection evacuated from the Zaporizhzhya
Until 2 March
The visionary art of Maria Prymachenko (1909–1997) has become a legend and an easily recognizable icon of Ukrainian culture. The self-taught creator of folk art is among the most beloved artists of the country, though she received no formal art education. Her likeness has appeared on the country’s coinage and stamps, her works decorate the fairy-tale books, and are featured in animation films. Sixteen Ukrainian memory institutions hold collections of Prymachenko’s art, which is exhibited worldwide. This exhibition presents Maria Prymachenko’s works from the collection evacuated from the Zaporizhzhya Regional Art Museum. It is the first event of this scale by the Ukrainian artist to be held in Lithuania.
Prymachenko produced paintings, ceramics and embroidery. In the 1960s, she started running her own art school. The artist spent six decades of her life in the village of Bolotnya in the Polesia region, where she survived the Holodomor, the Second World War, and the Chernobyl disaster, living to see the Independence of Ukraine. When the Russian aggression against Ukraine destroyed the Museum of Local History in Ivankiv, twenty of Prymachenko’s art pieces were rescued from destruction. Today the calling-for-peace message by Prymachenko’s art rings a prophetic note in the midst of the brutal uproar of the war. The exhibition features 60 selected compositions in gouache from Maria Prymachenkoʼs collection of 100 works brought to Lithuania.
LITHUANIA, Kaunas
Kaunas Picture Gallery
Fairy Tale. Childhood in Lithiania in the late Soviet era
Until 27 July
A legendary children's café "Pasaka" is back! But not as a dining and entertainment space, rather as a portal of glowing stained-glass windows, leading to contrasting childhood memories – from a city‘s housing areas to a small Lithuanian town, from a crushing system to art that is nurtured by the imagination – the exhibition encompasses the diversity of childhood issues characteristic of the late Soviet era. This narrative fills and transforms all three floors of the Picture Gallery.
The exhibition combines objects of art and design, documentary material, everyday objects, live stories of people and insights of experts in different fields. The exhibition shows not only the best works by artists from the late Soviet era, that reveal a theme of childhood, but also pieces of the contemporary art – textile installations by Martyna Plioplytė-Zujienė and Dovilė Gudačiauskaitė. A mysterious hall of the “Toy Doctor‘s Bag“ has been sound recorded by Karolis Lasys.
Title image: Bernar Venet. Related to: "Parametric Ordinary Differential Equation of the First Order in Two Dimensions", 2000. Detail
