Group exhibition, Port City by travelling artist’s residency Joy and Mirror was on at Four To Seven in Riga running January 21 to February 26, 2016. Including artists Gediminas G. Akstinas, Antanas Gerlikas, Petras Išora, Ona Lozuraitytė, and Rūtenė Merkliopaitė among others, the exhibition is a gathering of works that have been collected during and after the time together on the residency in Sardinia, Gardone Riviera and Athens.
The show —which also involved Marija Olšauskaitė, Jurgis Paškevičius, Rytis Saladžius, Emilija Škarnulytė, Jonas Žukauskas —and the residency as a whole is structured around the relationship between travelling, reflection and movement (joy), and form, manifestation, or the very reflection “that meets the identical of itself” (mirror): “In a travel from Joy to Mirror, forms and contents repeat and recreate, and also change over time with observations”.
In the exhibition organised by Jurga Daubaraitė and Monika Lipšic then, are things collected: “a sequence of proposals for a barter, a support, for a video camera, a friend, a window, a floor, a talk, a hearsay, subjects, time, a shopping list.”
An accompanying text runs like a conversation that has shrunk over time and makes sense and is connected but only in that the sentences are likely to be thought out by the person who spoke the last. It works like a series of conclusions that have arisen. An extract:
: well, a heater as a palm tree should be ok.
: let’s think that Riga is by the sea and there is plenty of salt in the air.
: it is winter now, and it would be great to have a fountain-pisuar. Or is it more appropriate for the spring? You see there are not many fountains in Vilnius.**