Looking Forward to Meet Me
2020-2021

Looking Forward to Meet Me is a project realized as a (narcissistic) introspection; an artist’s self-analysis transformed into a visual and spatial work. The title of the project, Looking Forward to Meet Me, is a projection of a future moment, an impending encounter with oneself. While the collection of works within the project includes one self-portrait by Morkevičius, the photograph remains almost imperceptible as it is framed underneath a stained glass pane. The project is thus a portrait ‘in becoming’ that relies on art history symbols, tropes borrowed from classical mythology, psychoanalytic interpretations, and personal memories. Some visual elements are rather figurative, while other photographic works drift towards abstraction. As a result, the project creates a collage of myriad connections and associations that defy arbitrary boundaries of representation as portrayal. Looking Forward to Meet Me rejects the canonical quality of objective likeness that the genre of this project is defined by, and delves into the process of self-awareness, recognition and understanding.

About Wear

Asmik Grigorian for Martinelis & Co

Public Secrets

2013-2015

The Public Secrets is a collection of urban experiences. The geography of these experiences spans both the city’s nightlife (as well as what’s left behind the scenes) and private spaces which provoke and, often, dictate specific actions. The city is a setting that produces situations, in which one can participate and, by participating, change the contours of this space, at least in the sense of perception and seeing.

The author captures the environment (the city and its people) in a distinctive manner that is intimate, subjective and minimal. These are poignant sensations, charismatic characters, public stories and private truths. Yet the photographer never violates privacy, as, while being a participant and witness of events, he focuses on eloquent details of the situation. Vivid shots become an individual phenomenological study comprising scenes from the backstage of culture and everyday life, which are as crucial for getting a comprehensive and genuine view of the city as is its official, façade image.

Antanas Luciunas for L’UOMO Vogue

Dalia Ibelhaubtaite for Martinelis & Co

PortraitzineIssue Gintas K

Gintas K talks with sounds. Born as Gintas Kraptavičius in Lithuania in 1969, he has been active in experimental music scene since 1994. Gintas was the core member of Lithuanian industrial electronic music group “Modus”, while later taking up the role of an interdisciplinary artist, performing in a Fluxus manner. Today, besides collaborating with other sound artists, he periodically releases experimental and electroacoustic records and performs in various international festivals of new media art.

As someone enveloped in the experimental field of sound-making, Gintas doesn‘t exactly enjoy being photographed. He works and lives in a seemingly modest town of Marijampolė in a south of Lithuania. These qualities – professed indifference towards a coat of shiny surface and unassuming seriousness – are also those of his music. It asks for an engaged, concentrated listener. The subtlety of Gintas music extends to this book-project. Both are best enjoyed in silence.

B.Mockeviciute & G.Trimakas for Swallow gallery

Portraitzine
Issue Remigijus

Portraitzine is a project by Visvaldas Morkevičius, comprising a series of photographes as results of the visual anthropology research. The author sees Portraitzine as a collection of “journeys.” A journey is understood as a metaphor that gives a base for this project, defined by such parameters as a choice of a destination (a photographic subject), documentation of displacement (a photographe), and a curated collection of entries (a publication). It aims to relay the experience of undiscovered, often exotic environments and their denizens. Meticulously looking for details that could outline their identities, the research glances over the quotidian surroundings and gazes at postures that characters take in front of the camera: an artificial observer put in between the photographer and his subject. The photographer, by no means assumed as being in a superior position, accepts the role of “a tourist” who collects memorabilia and ephemera through observation. In Portraitzine, these ‘souvenirs’ speak not about a country or a city, but about people, their living and creative environments and their daily. Thus the focus point considers the person in a photographic frame altogether with his / her environs, emotional condition, personal qualities and temper, some of which have yet to be deciphered. The route is planned carefully, or happens by an accident like an irresistible ‘last minute’ call. Portraying people in an ethnographic manner, Visvaldas takes up the project as a form of a journey, and presents its outcomes in a visual logbook format - Portraitzine publication.

Lubomyr Melnyk | composer, pianist

Jacques Gaspard Biberkopf | composer, artist

Smala

2016-2017

The series seeks to capture the essence of 'Smala,' a term from Lithuanian jargon that describes the black resin used in road construction. 'Smala' symbolizes an indeterminate, complex, and constantly changing state of being. In this state, individuals experience heightened attention to detail and a shifting perception of reality. They are engulfed in a range of diverse sensations, where fascination, reality, ecstasy, and openness blend seamlessly with fiction, abstraction, depression, and rejection.

Mother Eleganza

Petra

Lazdynai for i-D

Ricardas Sumila | Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre Principal Conductor

Andrius Zakarauskas | painter

Zeina Nassar | Champion boxer for Zeit CAMP

Friends & Frames

Annastasia Sosunova | artist

Monika Liu | singer, songwriter

Let it Go

Caterina Barbieri | composer, musician

Vilius Kavaliauskas

Visvaldas Morkevicius

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