XII Baltic Triennial at Contemporary Art Centre

Artists in the exhibition: Wojciech Bąkowski, The Baltic Pavilion, Nick Bastis and Darius Mikšys, Brud, Goda Budvytytė and Viktorija Rybakova, Kipras Dubauskas, gerlach en koop, Kaspars Groševs and Ieva Kraule, Lukasz Jastrubczak, Erki Kasemets, Antanas Gerlikas, Mikko Kuorinki, Marcos Lutyens, Gizela Mickiewicz, Robertas Narkus, The Oceans Academy of Arts, Gerda Paliušytė, The World in Which We Occur (Margarida Mendes and Jennifer Teets), Mark Raidpere, Zofia Rydet, Bianka Rolando, Vitalijus Strigunkovas, Jay Tan, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonai

Artists in the program of events: Perrine Bailleux, The Baltic Pavilion, Post Brothers, Brud, Adam Kleinman, Valentinas Klimašauskas, Margarida Mendes and Jennifer Teets (The World in Which We Occur), Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonai (with Tracey Warr), Gerda Paliušytė, Robertas Narkus, Jay Tan (Eleven, Nearly Twelve: workshops of movement for teenagers)

Exhibition title: XII Baltic Triennial

Curated by: Virginija Januškevičiūtė

Venue: Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, Lithuania

Date: September 4 – October 18, 2015

Photography: Andrej Vasilenko, images courtesy of the artists and Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius

WHAT IS AN ARTWORK TODAY CAN BE SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY TOMORROW – this sentence, picked out from an interview with the artist David Bernstein, is at the very heart of the forthcoming Baltic Triennial. The idea is not new: how we perceive an artwork and what we expect of it changes in time. Things get forgotten, switched around and we end up looking at the wrong end of a musical instrument or playing a painting back to front. Sometimes, however, that’s on purpose: a composition decomposes, a song becomes a mood, a sculpture – a model, and a drawing – a letter. Are we then to talk about uses of art or rather about the art of uses? Or better skip art at all? Well, let’s find out.

This year’s Triennial focuses on the Baltic more than the previous editions, on the geographical region, its culture and the sea. It is a decidedly transdisciplinary event that, in its own motto of sorts (“what is an artwork today…”) is mainly interested in the “something else”. The exhibition opens up a range of topics and their couplings including influence, exchange, materiality, and impact. It’s primarily an exhibition at the CAC, but the programme of events – talks, launches, presentations, classes and performances – spanning six weeks expands behind the scenes.