Welcome to: Full Metal Shell DLC.
B: what is the meaning behind this title?
L: DLC means downloadable content. It is additional content created for an already released video game. In the context of this exhibition, DLC is a concept that gave birth to further development of my creative container, a supplement to previously explored themes, or a fusion between my personal and digital worlds.
B: so it’s an exhibition about video games?
L: it’s an exhibition about popular culture. As well as about my interaction with pop culture – I feel that it helps me survive a lot of negativity in today’s reality. It’s like an Escape button, a glare through rose-colored glasses, a form of self-hypnosis…
L: …escapism seems to me like a natural process. Maybe it’s a method to attract viewers to the gallery. The kind of viewer who still has the stereotype of elite art alive in their head. I want to start a dialogue in a slightly more open form of language.
B: what is the subject you depict? After all, this is a figurative exhibition? L: yes. And even though these sculptures are very static, as still and non-kinetic objects they themselves are impressed with action, movement and depict a second of stagnation in time. Perhaps the exhibition is not only about pop culture but also about time. It would seem that these characters are relevant, but it is their relevance that defines them in time. Hatsune Miku is already becoming a sad, outdated trend, meanwhile the image of Lana del Rey that looms in this exhibition feels worn out and in need of advice: sit down for a minute to take a breath.
B: the sculptural material you use descends from a family of durable materials meant for immortalization of image, yet it tends to rust. Seems like yet another aspect of time is analyzed through this perspective as well.
L: it works in the same parallel with the “expiration date” that exists in pop culture. The mood of personalised armageddon becomes a nostalgic existence in which you start to recognize the signs of the end of your own era. For me, Lana del Rey’s work is about that – about the romance of self-destruction.
B: is there a character creation aspect in your work?
L: there is perhaps the creation of a narrator. A slippery situation when the author themselves becomes a character who, as if an actor, has to distance themselves from their role in order to maintain objectivity. They act as a film director, according to whose assembled team one can predict the mood of the final film. Here, sculptures are played with as objects, yet they are assigned roles, given scenarios. In the end, through the principle of teamwork, one helps another to communicate a thought. It all comes together in the form of a mental collage…
L: …all this brings to mind the concept of Hikikomori. In this case they are sitting behind a computer screen.
L: and they are not completely secluded – they are busy building relationships through reference.
Disconnected.
Liudvikas Kesminas (1997) – a young generation artist, member of the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Union. In his work, the author develops the phenomenon of play and its place in the life of a modern person. The relationship of the player, viewer, participant to the rule-based human-created environment. Searching for inconsistencies, gaps or errors in systems, L. Kesminas uses subjective artistic practices as a tool for creating visual stories, often presented in the form of a spatial installation, drawing, painting or a strategy of adapting and reusing found objects.
The exhibition is funded by Lithuanian Council for Culture