ARENA magazine Nr. 6, 2009

Fubaisha, Japan

620 pages

 

Cover:

Jurgita Gerlikaite

"Matter, Energy, Space, Time", 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jurgita Gerlikaite's world of meditations

by Rio Kojima

If we were to read the works of Jurgita Gerlikaite as romantic stories, most likely we would easily fall into the trap she has set. To any of us, the world depicted might seem calm and simply beautiful. Filtered through many techniques and enriched with even new aspects by means of digital art, this world has been gaining a reputation in Lithuania and other East and Central European countries as well. Its rococo-ish design, themes from European allegories, and even details from Lithuanian landscape, that require a bit closer look to spot, create an illusion of having stepped into the maze of Vilnius old town itself. According to my experience, this old town, the most suitable to play hide-and-seek in throughout East and Central Europe, creates a one of a kind labyrinth that oozes the innocent cruelty of children’s game. Not only does it convey a fantastic scenery and architecture, but it has a distinct quality, emerging from Lithuanian history, where Catholicism at its finest coexisted with paganism, where a quest for identity would lead to alienation.

Vilnius person that she is, Jurgita captures people and beauty while wandering around the town and when later she transfers them to virtual reality, they inevitably are paired with absent elements and acquire twofold or threefold meanings. Innocent beauty is inevitably paired with cruelty and ugliness. Because of this polarity of a double bind – even a triple bind – Jurgita’s works, while laced within the inside story, also create a space for the participation of an outsider.

 

 

If we try to once again approach the cycle "Meditations", that bares the city as a hidden theme, the parallels between the world of Jurgita’s works and Vilnius’ cityness may not seem so accidental. Jurgita’s cityness is original in its superficial resemblance to Ciurlionis (Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, 1875-1911), who equated the primeval forest to the Orient under the same theme of meditation. Regarding Lithuanian painters one could paraphrase Picasso's remark on Cézanne and say that "everyone descended from Ciurlionis", but whereas most of those who inherited his motives, remained epigones, Jurgita Gerlikaite’s cycle "Meditations" is celebrated as a successful case of adaptation.

 

 

The cycle "Meditations" (18 pictures, 2007) may seem to express a beautiful world of fairy tales, but it wouldn’t be wrong to say that it is filled with symbols of pre-established harmony. It is informed by a motive of transformation, the division and dissolution of the subject as well as an endeavor to express a subject by means of color dissolving the story itself. All of this, while telling a beautiful story. Every figure is accompanied by a shadow, and while getting intoxicated with the world of dazzling beauty we cannot help but begin to question ourselves. The scenery gets twisted, turns into colors, and after starting to tell a story falls into nothingness or maybe it is the main character staring at his absence or his nonexistence in a meaningless story itself. The subject quickly turns from the one who is chased by the devil, into the devil. It must be a hide-and-seek game in the maze, suitable for Vilnius. In fact, this cycle "Meditations" was foreshadowed by several digital works from 2006.

For example, the picture "Matter, energy, space, time", used as cover artwork for this book, depicts a face with no expression or even with an anti-expression, reminiscent of a No mask, the face of a person who is obviously meditating. This face tells of someone, who, as in Zen meditation, observes the nothingness of one’s self falling asleep, then eliminates the vision of the observing self and then overcomes the consciousness of elimination. Whether the knowledge about the origins of a piece of art contributes to a better understanding of it or not, it is well known that in her years in the Vilnius Academy of Arts Jurgita researched and explored Zen esthetics. Therefore it wouldn’t be very surprising if this appeared in the cycle "Meditations", the hide-and-seek game of Vilnius as a substantial universe placed within her intellectual and esthetic worlds and centered around the Zen-like elimination of the subject.

In the picture "Equinox Moon", which is a marvelous example of Jurgita’s esthetic strategy, the abnormal moon above the city becomes an intruding objet d’art, an object itself, that transforms and twists space. The object itself technique is repeated in the cycle "Meditations", where suddenly Jurgita herself appears as an intruder in the "Meditation XVI". As Hitchcock appearing on the screen, this objet d’art does create some sort of polyphonic space.
The work "Man and Woman" seems to be dealing with the relationships of a pair, but at the same time it follow the "Matter, energy, space, time" and depicts the transformation of the subject, the motif that is repeated in "Meditation VI".

Jurgita Gerlikaite studied Art History and Theory at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, went to study abroad at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts for three years, then resumed studies in Lithuania and graduated. Later she studied in Denmark for three years and worked at a print studio in Copenhagen. Now Jurgita is back in Lithuania.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the middle ’90s, Scandinavian countries granted young, talented Lithuanian artists great opportunities and Jurgita, who made use of them, belongs to the generation of "Scandinavian artists". In 2006 she became a member of the Lithuanian Artists' Association and besides being an active art critic, she is enrolled in graduate studies in Cultural Management and Cultural Policy. Jurgita is also known for her research into the works of her grandmother, the naïve artist Petronele Gerlikiene. The anthology that she compiled is presented in the section “Old publications/New publications” by Masako Yoshida. (Jurgita has told me that she was greatly influenced by her grandmother). Most of Jurgita’s digital paintings have been shown in individual exhibitions throughout Lithuania and abroad, and have had good reviews internationally. Recently, she won 1st prize in the Minsk International Graphics Exhibition in 2008, and her works have decorated the walls of the Embassy of Latvia in Washington. The first album, printed in Lithuania in January 2009, has received favorable responses.

*The list of exhibitions and publications can be found in Jurgita's homepage www.gerlikaite.lt The logo for this ARENA issue is designed by Jurgita Gerlikaite and will be used from now on.

Rio Kojima, Professor of History, Chubu University, Japan
„ARENA“, Fubaisha, Japan, 2009, Nr. 6, p. 1–4.
Translated from Japanese by Ieva Susnyte