Pakui Hardware at Bielefelder Kunstverein

Artist: Pakui Hardware

Exhibition title: Extrakorporal

Venue: Bielefelder Kunstverein, Bielefeld, Germany

Date: November 17, 2018 – February 24, 2019

Photography: Ugnius Gelguda / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Bielefelder Kunstverein

Pakui Hardware is interested in the close relationship between materiality, technology and economies. Central to their work is the question as to how far technology actually does alter economics and our physical perception of reality. They investigate questions of automation, robotics, synthetic biology and the significance of new materials. The artist duo produces sculptures and installations suffused with various materials, images, and shapes, which are often reminiscent of futuristic or biological settings. Here, fabric and material produced by technology encounter transparent, ephemeral materials; they determine the equally organic and synthetic appearance of their objects and spatial installations.

The exhibition »Extrakorporal« immerses the viewer in a Petri dish, or perhaps in a shamanistic realm? Here, organs and tissues grow outside bodies, the future behavior of which is still a matter for speculation. Turritopsis jellyfish and sea-urchin larvae alike are examined cell by cell in an attempt to track down the recipe that makes them immortal. Seemingly familiar yet elusive objects are suspended in space and appear to evoke the inexplicable energies of self-rejuvenation, and they are reminiscent of ritualistic masks. They resemble trophies gained by extracting the essence of the life and, hence, of the immortality these sea creatures possess.

Pakui Hardware, founded 2014 by Neringa Černiauskaitė, born 1984 in Klaipeda, Lithuania, and Ugnius Gelguda, born 1977 in Vilnius, Lithuania, had numerous solo shows since 2014, amongst others at EXILE in Vienna (AUT), at Tenderpixel Gallery in London (GB, both 2018), at Trafó contemporary art center in Budapest (HU), at SIC Room at Kiasma in Helsinki (FIN, both 2017), MUMOK in Vienna (AUT, 2016) and at kim? Contemporary Art Center in Riga (LVA, 2015). Lately they took part in group exhibitions, e.g. at MAXXI in Rome (I), at Domaine Pommery in Reims (F), at Baltic Triennal 13 at Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius (LT), at Museum Sztuki in Łódź (P, all 2018), at Kunstverein Braunschweig and Kunstverein Freiburg, at the Kunsthalle Basel (SUI) and at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (AUS, all 2017).