Elvyra Katalina Kriaučiūnaitė. Shifting time
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curator
Regina Urbonienė
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organier
vilnius graphic art centre
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the project is partly funded by
the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Lithuanian Artists’ Association
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media partner
Lithuanian World Community
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opening
2022 04 13, 18–20 h.
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the exhibition was held
2022 04 13 – 05 07
On April 13 – May 7, 2022, an exhibition of works by Elvyra Katalina Kriaučiūnaitė titled Shifting Time and commemorating the 55th anniversary of her artistic career will be on display at Vilnius Graphic Art Centre’s Kairė-dešinė gallery. The opening will be held on April 13, from 6–8 pm.
Graphic artist Elvyra Katalina Kriaučiūnaitė consistently creates an aesthetically distinctive, impressive world in which the creativity of her inexhaustible imagination and southern temperament unfolds. The artist’s prints substantially enrich contemporary Lithuanian graphic art with their flamboyant colours, expression, and free flight of echoes of Argentinian tango.
Born in faraway Argentina, Kriaučiūnaitė came to Lithuania with her parents as a teenager and graduated in graphic arts here. After a trip to Argentina and a visit to the studio of the famous handmade paper maker Ricardo Crivelli in 1994, the artist discovered new spaces of creative interpretation, while handmade paper became the basis of almost all of her artistic ideas. The number of her solo exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad is close to 60, and she has taken part in over 300 group shows. Among the numerous awards the artist has won, the most notable is the Golden Insignia of the Lithuanian Artists’ Association (2005), the diploma of the 18th International Print Triennial in Krakow (2006), and the Culture and Art Award of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania (2012).
The exhibition Shifting Time presents works from the recent five years, which sum up Kriaučiūnaitė’s creative anniversary. The show consists of three parts. The laboratory is an installation that reveals to the viewer a small corner of the artist’s studio, as well as filmed footage of her daily routine and creative activity. The second part, Signs of Time, testifies to the artist’s identity and the relevance of her ritualistic and meditative creative process. With her chamber works, the artist subtly talks about eternal values: ‘about the present and the yesterday, about faith and hope, about what we find when we come here and what we leave when we depart.’ The third part of the exhibition, Gardens of Hope, is dominated by spatial handmade paper objects. Inspired by Lithuanian straw ‘gardens’ (sodai), these works symbolise the opposite of chaos, alluding to bright expectations.
The exhibition will open with a presentation of the publication Shifting Time (edited by Regina Urbonienė and designed by Rūta Mozūraitė, published by the Lithuanian Artists’ Association’s publishing house artseria), a retrospective of Elvyra Katalina Kriaučiūnaitė’s work. The publication reflects the most prominent periods of the artist’s creative career and analyses her diverse fields of activity. Texts by art critics are complemented by the artist’s own engaging and authentic comments, which facilitate the reader’s closer acquaintance with Kriaučiūnaitė’s work.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a special educational programme – a series of handmade paper workshops. Elvyra Katalina Kriaučiūnaitė will reveal the secrets of artist-made paper to the visitors. Further information on the time of the workshops will be announced on the VGAC’s website graphic.lt and on our Facebook page.