13th Kaunas Biennial | exposition in 2022
After the closing of the 13th Kaunas Biennial exhibition "Once Upon Another Time...gyveno jie jau kitaip", two artworks, commissioned for the Kaunas Biennial, remains in the city till the end of the 2022, to celebrate Kaunas - European Capital of Culture.
Please find the work in the permanent exposition of the Devil's Museum (tickets at the museum):
Shary Boyle (Canada), The Trampled Devil, 2021
Written, directed and performed by Shary Boyle
Commissioned for the Kaunas Biennial, 2021
The Trampled Devil re-imagines the missing body of St Michael the Archangel from the sculpture of the same name, as performed by the artist using animation techniques on an overhead projector, hand-made theatre props, and her own costumed characters.
The film, conceived as a site-specific narrative, completes the statue all the while complicating its original narrative of good triumphing over evil. An archetypal cast of characters – the White Witch, Vampire Bat, Devil, Crone and “Warbanks”, a finance CEO who looks suspiciously like Andy Warhol – shape-shift through negotiation, trickery and magical exchange.
A cautionary tale, The Trampled Devil embodies the troubling ambiguity of our species: suggesting that only through vigilance and an honest heart might we hope to keep our inner devils pinned eternally beneath our better natures.
In front of the Devil's Museum, on the M. K Čiurlionis museum wall (free of charge):
Goodhearter Wisher (Lithuania), It was raining heavily, 2021
Foam polystyrene, polyester resin, steel, Plexiglas, copper, acrylic paint
Commissioned for the Kaunas Biennial, 2021
Goodhearter Wisher has a keen understanding of materials that he combines in unusual ways in an aim to create stirring and emotional experiences. With his public sculpture It was raining heavily, the artist creates an upside-down world where gravity is thwarted. The enormous crying eyes made of cast tires, embody the universal sorrow, loneliness and painful loss we have felt during the pandemic. The large tears falling from the eyes metaphorically flow upwards until they reach two immense carved sponges on the roof of the museum, which act as receptacles. The imagined contact of the tears hitting the sponges transform the water into suds and bubbles. The piece is displayed on a wall of the National, M.K. Čiurlionis Museum of Art, honouring the enduring influence of the Lithuanian symbolist painter and composer.