Exhibitions

Nerijus Erminas is one of the most interesting Lithuanian conceptual sculpture creators whose works are distinguished by the sensitive transfer of reality to surreal subconscious experiences. Indeed, in the artist’s narrative installations, easily recognizable person’s life details and everyday situations go through unbelievable transformations, are diverted to an unusual and distant from reality direction, while the viewer is involved in an endless game of meaning. In the narrative installations by Nerijus Erminas, meaningless everyday situations (without them the life would be disturbed, inconsistent, misleading) become the major force in the artistic creativeness worth of a consistent creative observation.

In the exhibition viewers had the opportunity to see two new installations by Nerijus Erminas: “Seven Days Until the Night” and “I Will Be Ready When You Arrive” that are a part of a longer two-year research. In the first installation that reflects the exhibition’s title “Seven Days Until the Night”, the author investigates the concept of simulacrum. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard describes simulacrum as a state of an object or a phenomenon, where an object starts to project something that does not exist instead of projecting reality. In the installation by Nerijus Erminas, the interpretation of simulacrum is continued with a real experience of a “wrong” or unreal act. An incorrectly read title in a tabloid leads to a false expression Seven days until the night that is neither related to contents nor to the primary version of the title. Referring to this experience the meaning of reality is melted among individual, meaningless objects and conceptions, and everyday attributes that have lost their original contexts without the primary contents, become the attempts to hide the meanings that actually do not exist.

The second installation “I Will Be Ready When You Arrive” reflects the existential contemplations regarding temporariness and eternity of the human. The author in this work invokes the symbols as the main expression. Sculptural objects connected by internal significant associations create sentient experience that focuses around the drawing of a man’s scull. Through various experiences the installation captures the decay of the boundary between physical and metaphysical worlds.

Nerijus Erminas (1976) is a Lithuanian conceptual artist. He gained his diploma in sculpture at Vilnius Academy of Arts. The artist has hosted over fourteen personal shows in Lithuania, and actively participates in group exhibitions abroad. In 2012, he was awarded a jury prize for the best presentation of a sculpture in the contemporary art fair ArtVilnius and in 2014 his installation “Pearls” was presented in Milan (gallery Dimora Artica). This is his third exhibition in AV17 gallery since 2011.

 

The exhibition was sponsored by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.