Exhibition of lithuanian artists Dalia Laučkaitė-Jakimavičienė and Rytas Jakimavičius
Dalia Laučkaitė-Jakimavičienė’s works are a part of a bigger series Noctuidae. Collection. The object here is a moth and a moth collection. The moth is tightly connected with light – it flies towards the light as to the desired goal, while in reality – to death. In Christian iconography the butterfly symbolizes immortality and resurrection; the life cycle of the butterfly, consisting of three phases - life, death and resurrection. On the other hand, due to its beauty and short life, the butterfly is considered a symbol of vanity. Besides, the butterfly can also be treated both as an extremely beautiful creation and as a hairy monster. Consequently its image is highly controversial.
Dalia Laučkaitė-Jakimavičienė’s world is full of absurd juxtapositions, strange metaphors, ambiguous meanings, which can only be grasped intuitively. This is where the strategy of surrealism begins, the strategy that to a large degree underpins Dalia Laučkaitė-Jakimavičienė’s work. Her work reflects the impulses of the subconscious, personal allusions and fantasies. By deconstructing mass-made decals, the artist creates an individualized world: moreover, over the last decade, with the help of photographs, she started making special decals for her own work. She was the first among Lithuanian ceramicists to use digital technologies, computer software and laser prints, which has enabled her to design a unique assortment of decals based on autobiographical mythology. What is most challenging about Dalia Laučkaitė-Jakimavičienė’s work is her constant act of balancing between the images from art history, with their beauty, sweetness and kitsch, the surreal world of the subconscious and the coded autobiographical signs. The artist successfully straddles these diverse worlds in her art, the overall effect of which is even more enhanced by its elegant and precise execution. (from: Laima Surgailienė, Biographical Codes in Art, Dalia Laučkaitė-Jakimavičienė / Contemporary Lithuanian Artists, Vilnius, artseria, 2009).
Rytas Jakimavičius' series of the sculptural porcelain All Year Round is a procession aligned in space, and as if in time, too. It is about calm and slow changes in nature. Christian iconography is used here – a lamb (Lamb of God), a tree and a vessel.
Most of the works were executed in the International Ceramics Studio (ICSHU), Kecskemet, (Hungary), using porcelain of exceptional quality, Limoges porcelain. All elements of the composition are sculptural, but many of them are functional, too, they are sculpture-like - vessels.
Jakimavičius is a representative of the generation, the art outlook of which was formulated in the beginning of the nineties, when the tendencies of self-reflection were especially strengthened in the Lithuanian art. So, it is not surprisingly, that Jakimavičius' creative energy is more focused on the implication of his individual world outlook rather than on the solving functional and technological problems. The artist perceives these two polarised attitudes ("pure" art and „applied“ art) as absolutely comprehensible thing and organically adapts them in ceramics. There vanish in his works the boundaries and signs which earlier strictly distinguished between "high" and "low" art and did not allow to link the ideas of "pure" art with everyday needs. (from: https://www.culture.lt/Lietuva/esme/page6a.htm#jak).
Both parts of the exhibition are about the cycles of life, changing seasons and the flow of time.