↳ Exhibitions

Rūtenė Merk at Editorial

September 21, 2018

Artist: Rūtenė Merk

Exhibition title: Spirits Within

Venue: Editorial, Vilnius, Lithuania

Date: September 7 – October 19, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Editorial, Vilnius

Spirits Within

ART HISTORIAN: Body and medium are both involved in the meaning of funereal images, as it is the missing body of the dead in whose place images are installed. But these images in turn are in need of an artificial body in order that they might occupy the vacant place of the deceased. To this end, a lost body is exchanged for the virtual body of the image.

CHUCK NOLAND: We’ve made real fire, huh, Wilson. So, Wilson?

FIRST PHILOSOPHER: A text lives only if it lives on, and it lives on only if it is at once translatable and untranslatable. Totally translatable, it disappears as a text, as writing, as a body of language. Totally un-translatable, even within what is believed to be one language, it dies immediately.

EDITOR: After completing the mission “Burning Desire”, Denise can be found at her house in Ganton between the times of 16:00 and 06:00 (4:00 PM and 6:00 AM). Unlike other girlfriends, Denise has no requirements in order to date her.

ART HISTORIAN: Here we grasp the roots of that very contradiction which will forever characterize images: images make a physical (a body’s) absence visible by transforming it into iconic presence. The mediality of images is thus rooted in a body analogy.

SECOND PHILOSOPHER: Even the Pyramid, however, will not be as interesting as the dead king within it, as he is the only subject whose dreams are truly worth interpreting.

GENERAL HEIN: Where is the PROOF?
DOCTOR AKI ROSS: Here.

RŪTENĖ MERK (b. 1991) is a painter based in Munich. In 2013 she received Painting BA from Vilnius Academy of Arts and curretly she studies in Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Selected shows: (How did I get here) Painting in Lithuania, CAC, Vilnius, 2012; 24 Spaces – a Cacophony, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, 2014; Žilvitis, Vartai Gallery, Vilnius, 2016; Body and Darkness, Vartai Gallery, Vilnius, 2017; Children of the New East, Art Hall Tallinn, Estonia, 2017; White Walkers, Talinas 10, Riga, 2017; JCDecaux Prize, CAC, Vilnius, 2017; Entangled Tales, Rupert, Vilnius, 2018; Virtualacra, Jahresausstellung, ADbKM, Munich, 2018; Virtualacra, solo show, Vent Gallery, Vienna, 2018.