Aurelija Maknytė. Channels

On 24 July at 6 pm, the exhibition 'Channels' by Aurelija Maknytė will open in the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Art (NGA, Konstitucijos Ave. 22, Vilnius), part of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNMA). 

'I found it!' could be the formula for both Aurelija Maknytė's work and the making of this exhibition. This is the first comprehensive presentation of the artist's work, bringing together her better-known found-object installations as well as video works, fragments of early pieces, and material from her personal archive, to reveal her sustained attention to light and screens.

Nature and television are equal sources of wonder for Maknytė. Having initially turned towards the natural sciences, the artist carried into the field of media not only systematisation and precision, but also vocabulary: here, relationship turns into symbiosis, and broadcasting into the synthesis of protein chains. Light becomes the exhibition's leitmotif, laying a channel between screens and gardens, between the National Gallery of Art's Great Hall and its counterpart by the Širvinta River, visited by bees, roe deer, lizards, and others.

Contrary to a monumentalising narrative, Maknytė's work is built on the writing of small histories and ephemeral gestures: looking closely, collecting, connecting, preserving, and collaborating. It is an authorial and deeply personal world of accumulation and classification. Within it, the line between document and fiction dissolves, and attention turns to everyday moments that often slip past unnoticed, to the overlooked corners of attention and memory, while also foregrounding the material nature of media and memory storage and the relativity of value systems. Although the exhibition tells the story of one person's curiosity and singular way of looking, it also speaks to an era - the lifespan of media and technologies, testimonies of private and public televisual memory, and the results of collaboration and shared undertakings.

In this exhibition, Maknytė's work unfolds as an intensive, ongoing practice spanning several decades, in which life is inextricably intertwined with art, incompleteness is appreciated and valuable, and works are not always works - but may become so, just as they may sink back into everyday life, into archives, to await future re-creations and restorations.

Aurelija Maknytė (b. 1969) is a Lithuanian artist living between Vilnius and the Širvintos district. In the early 1990s, she studied design at the Telšiai Higher School of Applied Arts and later completed the then-newly established Bachelor's and Master's programmes in Photography and Media Art at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. Maknytė has frequently participated in exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, including the 'Parallel Progressions' cycle (2001-2003), the international performance festival 'Dimension 1' (2006), 'Art Pause' (2002), '101.3 km: Competition and Cooperation' (2006), 'Urban Stories. X Baltic Triennial of International Art' (2009), 'Lithuanian Art 2000-2010: Ten Years' (2010), 'The Nineties' (2012), 'Lithuanian Art 2012: 18 Exhibitions' (2012), and 'Blood and Soil: Dark Arts for Dark Times' (2019). Maknytė's work has also been featured in group exhibitions such as 'Loose Ends' at the National Gallery of Art (NDG, 2019), 'The Sweet Sweat of the Future' (NDG, 2019), 'The Origin of Species: 1990s DNA' at the MO Museum (2019), 'Chronometers' at the Klaipėda Culture Communication Centre (KKKC, 2018), and 'The Body of the Letter' at the Sodų 4 project space (2016), among others. To date, she has held three solo exhibitions: 'Parents' Room' (Artifex), 'Deficit' (Gallery 101) (both in 2015), and 'Cabinets of Nature' at the Vilnius Town Hall (2020). Her works are held in the collections of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art and the MO Museum.

Participating artists: Aurelija Maknytė, Julijus Balčikonis, Vilma Šileikienė, CAC TV team
Curators: Inesa Brašiškė, Agnė Narušytė
Coordinators: Aušra Trakšelytė, Ernestas Parulskis
Architect Beatričė Mockevičiūtė
Producing Architect Mindaugas Reklaitis
Graphic Designer Jonė Miškinytė
Consultant for Photographic Archives Visvaldas Morkevičius
Editors: Ilona Čiužauskaitė, Emma Stirling
Translator Agnė Narušytė
Technicians: Norbert Hinc, Dainius Markevičius, Salvijus Misevičius, Tomas Karolis Kucharskis, Tomas Orlovas, Andrius Valskys

Special thanks: Lolita Jablonskienė, Vilma Šileikienė, Julijus Balčikonis, Justina Zubaitė-Bundzė, Arvydas Maknys, Kasparas, Gerda Paliušytė, Julija Fomina, Monika Kalinauskaitė, 'Special Mention Projects', Matas Aerobica, Raimundas Malašauskas, Virginija Januškevičiūtė, Antanas Dombrovskij, Jogintė Bučinskaitė, Karolis Kaupinis, Ugnė Balčiūnaitė

Exhibition Organiser LNMA National Gallery of Art

Sponsor Exterus: Fundermax
Partner Meno avilys
Media Partners: Delfi, JCDecaux