The Art After Hours art festival, which is an extension of the ArtVilnius contemporary art fair, has become not only a tradition but also an important affair in the city. The event of contemporary art initiatives, ideas, and international networking broadens the opportunities to feel the artistic pulse of Vilnius for foreign visitors, Vilnius residents, and all those interested in art. The doors of the city’s galleries and institutions will be open for free until late this Friday, 7 October.
Photo – Andrej Vasilenko © Gallery Artifex
“This year is a special year for Art After Hours, as we are already starting to celebrate the 700th birthday of Vilnius, taking place next year. The contemporary art festival is undoubtedly a reflection of a young, vibrant Vilnius and its dynamic, curious, and exciting contemporary art field,” says festival curator Gabija Tarabilda. The art festival will feature 14 galleries and art spaces, 80 artists, 9 events, meetings, and performances.
Photo – Laurynas Skeisgiela © Apiece. Midaugas Reklaitis
On 7 October, Vilnius will be bursting with art – you can start your morning at the LITEXPO Exhibition and Congress Center, where the opening of the art fair ArtVilnius’22 will take place, and after the sun sets, you can continue your art exploration free of charge at selected galleries, art and public spaces in Vilnius. Their hosts will not only organize the most interesting exhibitions, performances, and installations but also meetings with artists and gallerists.
Rimas Sakalauskas. Vortex ©
Two guided tours of the selected galleries will start at 8 pm in different locations around the city, accompanied by art historians. For those who are less familiar with Vilnius, a gallery itinerary specially designed for the festival will help them get acquainted with the city.
The Vilnius art spaces participating in the Art After Hours festival have been selected by the event’s curator G. Tarabilda. The main aim of the selection was to bring together galleries, art spaces, and artists into one evening of quality content, open to everyone. The curator does not doubt that such art festivals help those who are just taking the first steps in this field to get to know art better: “The main idea behind the festival is to make art open and accessible. The festival has a definite educational function – it allows the public to get to know different art movements and techniques – graphics, painting, photography, sculpture, video and sound installations, performances, and many more.”
Karolina Ūla Valentaitė ©
On Friday evening, witches’ spells will be cast at the Vilnius Academy of Arts gallery 5 Malūnai. Witchcraft is the subject of Karolina Ūla Valentaitė’s solo exhibition Diaries of the Witches. The gallery will also host performative tarot card readings by the artist herself. The window gallery apiece on M. K. Čiurlionio street will present MORPH, an exhibition of performative architecture by Mindaugas Reklaitis, architect of the expositions, one of the co-producers and the architect of the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, which was awarded the Golden Lion. To be more precise, the gallery will present a device that creates an architectural form in space – a robotic manipulator. It will be on display to the public for 24 hours and can be viewed through the display windows.
On Friday evening, Vidmantas Samuolis’ painting exhibition Anatomy of Light will open at the AP Gallery in Užupis. The extremely large format canvases open up contrasting, graphic spaces filled with cosmic and mystical energy, and cross-cultural symbolism and explore the theme of human nature. The action at the Lithuanian Artists’ Association’s gallery Arka will start at 7 pm. The sounds of improvisational music will be spread by pianist Simonas Gilys. After the concert, visitors to the gallery will be invited to two guided tours of the exhibition Theatre Navigation: Who’s There, and the second tour will take them on a walk through the exhibition Relocation by Linas Liandzbergis and Arturas Valiauga.
The Vilnius Academy of Arts textile gallery Artifex will offer a chance to meet the artist Daukantė Subačiūtė. After collecting the best works created during and after the lockdown, Daukantė invites visitors to her public works. Public Works is the title of her exhibition, which features stories that are absurd and cute, poignant and cozy, obscene and ridiculous, in the lines of felt-tip pens and coloured pencils (and more). AV17 Gallery will present Andrej Polukord’s solo exhibition Goat. The artist explores the theme of consumerism through works made from secondary raw materials, while objects found in nature become a kind of trace or documentation of human activity.
Artists from different fields, participants of the international project Making of..!, have transformed the Artists’ Association Gallery into a creative laboratory/studio. The exhibition brought together an international team of artists – Jaap Klevering (Finland / Netherlands), Simonas Kuliešis (Lithuania), Marija Marcelionytė-Paliukė (Lithuania), Christoph Mügge (Sweden), Sebastian Mügge (Sweden), Tuomas Ollikainen (Finland), Merja Pennanen (Finland), and Viljami Roivas (Finland). The Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association’s gallery Atletika will present the exhibition Politics of Space, which brings together the projects designed in the creative laboratory and the symposium Politics of Space and previously implemented by the artists.
Artist Kristina Norvilaitė will also open the doors of her gallery. She will invite her art fans to meet her from ten thirty in the evening and will talk about her exhibition of graphic works Unseen Sky Signs. In the Meno Niša gallery, video artist Rimas Sakalauskas will try to merge two realities – the real and the virtual. In the two-part exhibition, visitors will be treated to the video work Reversed and a kinetic interactive installation, which can be experienced through a virtual reality headset.
In the sculpture garden of the MO Museum, the exhibition of the museum’s sculptures will be open 24 hours a day. Night visitors will find works by National Prize laureates Mindaugas Navakas, Petras Mazura, and Vladas Urbanavičius. The MO Garden is also home to the unconventionally beautiful figurative sculptures by Ksenia Jaroševaitė, as well as Donatas Jankauskas-Duonis’ Victor or Victoria and a fragment of the tombstone monument to the Liobis family by Vincas Kisarauskas.
The Pamėnkalnis Gallery of the Lithuanian Artists’ Association has brought together artists Niklas Ingelius, Atis Izands, Agnė Juodvalkytė, Madara Kvēpa, Leela Mai, Kristen Rästas, Ansis Rozentalis, Jurgis Tarabilda, Karolis Vaivada, Laura Vella, and Linda Vilkas. Young artists from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland question painting and its historical perception in the international exhibition A Fluid State of Mind: Baltic Painting in the Expanded Field.
The Užupis Art Incubator will host meetings with artist Morta Jonynaitė, who is presenting her exhibition Square Root. In the exhibition, the spaces of the Užupis Art Incubator become a brain, whose hemispheres are full of shame and envy. Uncomfortable feelings, taking physical form, creep out of the head and into the public, becoming mediators of different experiences.
The Vilnius Graphic Art Center will offer a guided tour of the 5th exhibition of book illustrations O, Imago!, bringing together 40 Lithuanian illustrators. The visitors will be guided and told stories by the exhibition curators Ieva Babilaitė and Jolita Liškevičienė. This is the only exhibition of its kind in Lithuania with a long tradition of continuity, presenting the most successful examples of Lithuanian book illustration in all genres, content, and form.
The main partner of the Art After Hours festival is the international contemporary art fair ArtVilnius’22, the event is part of the 700th anniversary of Vilnius 700vilnius.lt program, and the festival is partly funded by the Office of the Government.
