Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė at Trafó Gallery

Artists: Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė

Exhibition title: RYXPER1126AE

Venue: Trafó Gallery, Budapest, Hungary

Date: March 24 – April 26, 2020

Photography: Dávid Biró / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Trafó Gallery, Budapest

This enclosed container houses something we cannot perceive, a memory to the past or an illusion. It is enclosed here in its image and its form, flattened akin to a 19th century diorama. A camera establishes the way of seeing without permission to full understanding without permission to be inhaled.’

The exhibition of Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė invites and isolates the visitors at the same time, leading them into zones of the in-between. In-between the space of the real and that of the online realm, in-between matter and information, nature and its rendered representation, narration and theory, individual and collective experiences. Central to the exhibition is a fragrance, which is a synthetic molecular replica, a volatile memory of the smell collected during one of the previous performances of the artists. The scent together with other elements in the exhibition – such as organic installation, a video generated with artificial intelligence, a sound installation and diverse objects – renders the abandoned gallery space an aberrant, organic but also austere speculative environment.

The exhibition RYXPER1126AE can be visited online between 24th of March and 26th of April, 2020 during our regular opening hours (all days, except Monday, from 4pm to 10pm) ››› VIA THE FOLLOWING LINK ‹‹‹.

The exhibition is complemented by accompanying events; performance documentations and an online collective reading session in relation to the Young Girl Reading Group project of the artists ongoing since 2013.

Dorota Gawęda (b. 1986, PL) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (b. 1987, LT) are an artist duo based in Basel (CH). They work within a variety of media spanning performance, photography, installation, fragrance, sculpture and video. Gawęda and Kulbokaitė are MA graduates of the Royal College of Art, London (2012), and have been working together since 2013. In their work, the duo explore artistic production through collaboration and search for aberrant media that lend themselves to creating speculative environments. Formally, Gawęda and Kulbokaitė explore incompleteness and linguistic ingraspability, apparent both in their approach to performance as in the sculptural objects and environments that they propose, offering ways to renegotiate our complex relationship to Nature – ecological system that we have historically defined as separate to ourselves, as outside.

Gawęda and Kulbokaitė are also the founders of YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP (2013-), an extended serial project under which they organized more than 150 reading groups and performances at a sustained pace and at various locations. Currently the duo are developing the YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP digital archive, which will launch in April 2020, in collaboration with ARIEL- Feminisms in the Aesthetics, Copenhagen.

Supported by: Pro Helvetia, National Cultural Fund of Hungary, Káli Kövek, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania to Hungary

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, RYXPER1126AE, 2020, exhibition view, Trafó Gallery, Budapest

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: Hexanol II, 2019. Steel, meadow; 300 x 50 x 50 cm (Photo: Dávid Biró)

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, RYXPER1126AE, 2020, exhibition view, Trafó Gallery, Budapest

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: Leave no trace II, 2018. Polished stainless steel; 140 x 40 x 40 cm (Photo: Dávid Biró)

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: Hexanol II, 2019 – detail. Steel, meadow; 300 x 50 x 50 cm (Photo: Dávid Biró)

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: Leave no trace I, 2018. Polished stainless steel, myrrh, LED, sampling bottle, headspace needle, saliva, lighter; 140 x 120 x 40 cm (Photo: Dávid Biró)

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: Leave no trace I, 2018 – detail. Polished stainless steel, myrrh, LED, sampling bottle, headspace needle, saliva, lighter; 140 x 120 x 40 cm (Photo: Dávid Biró)

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: RYXPER 1126AE, 2019. Industrial aroma diffuser mechanism, programmed at 02:60 interval, stainless steel, RYXPER 1126AE fragrance (produced in collaboration with International Flavors and Fragrances Inc) (Photo: Dávid Biró)

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, RYXPER1126AE, 2020, exhibition view, Trafó Gallery, Budapest

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: Gusła (fc83756324a62016), 2020. Animated video looped 6;54; LED fan; ⌀ 50 cm (Photo: Dávid Biró)

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, RYXPER1126AE, 2020, exhibition view, Trafó Gallery, Budapest

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: Rūta (Pentatonic), 2020. 5 public announcement speakers, sound; looped 6:52 (Photo: Dávid Biró)

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, RYXPER1126AE, 2020, exhibition view, Trafó Gallery, Budapest

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: Gusła (c934bc564106af50), 2020. Animated video looped 6;18; LED fan; ⌀ 50 cm (Photo: Dávid Biró)

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, RYXPER1126AE, 2020, exhibition view, Trafó Gallery, Budapest

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: Gusła, 2020. Still image from the animated video