top of page

Exhibition

and series of events 

2014 June 27th – July 21st

Taiga, Dvortsovaya nab. 20, Saint-Petersburg

Exhibition poster by Daiva Tubutytė

In a group show different artworks gather. What thinks you? Artworks ask each other. When we first heard them speaking, we thought it is a grammatical mistake they enact, but ‘what thinks me’ was first time uttered by an artist, John Baldessari – on purpose. In 1982 he had written a text named timely – What thinks me now.­ Artists often appear behind artworks and one could say this exhibition is devoted to an artwork.

An exhibition of several artworks and a series of events all in different ways address the concept of a self: the self of an author, the self of the object and the self of an image. It suggests that the self is a thick material of different densities, constituted by a surrounding environment which constantly ‘thinks (us)’. The show evolves around this subject through images, object based stories, program of a video works and series of events.

ARTISTS
John Baldessari, David Bernstein, Ragna Bley, Jacques Gaspard Biberkopf, David Raymond Conroy, Jesse Darling, Jugedamos, Nikita Kadan, Rebecca La Marre, Lina Lapelytė, Slava Leontjev, Taus Makhacheva, Marija Olšauskaitė, Roman Osminkin, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Jurgis Paškevičius, Daniel Shanken, Viktor Timofeev, Technopoetry, Julijonas Urbonas, Robin Vanbesien, Mark Wallinger

Curators Justė Kostikovaitė and Monika Lipšic presented a group show comprised of Lithuanian and international artists, many of whom have never before exhibited in Russia.The exhibition What Thinks Me seeks to understand how the concept  of the self is being constructed and/or reflected through artworks. The show revolves around this subject through metaphors, object-based stories and artworks themselves.

The name of the show derives from a text written by artist John Baldessari (b. 1931) an American conceptual artist whose work was famously criticized as ‘a mere parody of conceptualism’. However we all saw and witnessed the importance of Baldessari’s work for the next generation of artists.

In his text-work titled What thinks me now (1982) the artist named a continuous list of things, enumerating abstract ideas that think him - and who said it is not the right expression to describe a process of idea circulation? The text encompasses a wide list; as wide as one’s consciousness, or one’s self.

This text work became a premise for the show, where the artworks were chosen and composed according to it. One could say this is a show dedicated to a single artwork. ‘What thinks me’ became a tool to generate content.

The show is comprised of an exhibition and a series of events, including performances and a workshop.

Graphic designer: Daiva Tubutytė
Exhibition display: Marija Olšauskaitė and Petras Olšauskas
Exhibition curators: Justė Kostikovaitė and Monika Lipšic

Events

Opening Performance Event
27 June 2014, from 8 pm
Artists: Technopoetry (RU), Lina Lapelytė (UK)

Recurring Performance Event
Yes, Really! 2014, a performance by Lina Lapelyte (UK)

Workshop
Another Victory Over The Sun: Workshop
5 July 2014, 12-6 pm
The day will feature a presentation by artist Rebecca LaMarre, art historian Amelia Groom, curator Juste Kostikovaite with conversation and screenings from contributors to the publication.

Networking
Blind Carbon Copy: Curators Go To The Bar: 90+
30 June 2014, Monday, all day

Kipras Dubauskas, What Thinks Me Saint Petersburg, 2014

What Thinks Me Now (1982)

 

I want to re-enchant and remythologize. 
I want to drill a hole deep-down in art to discover the mythic infrastructure. 
(I am less interested in the form art takes than the meaning an image evokes.) 
(I am interested in art as a way of knowing.) 
I want to express myself in archetypal imagery. 
I want to stand at the edge rather than the center. 
I want to recall what I always knew. I am interested in what thinks me. 
(I would rather discover the memory of the soul than to be correct in thought.) 
I want to move away from racial amnesia. 
I want to produce images that startle one into recollection. 
I want to think of history so that it is not a record of events but a method of release. 
I want to see the world as something else than serial progression. 
I want to know the matrix of events in history. 
(What happens to be trivial in a fairy tale, etc. could be the lingering remnant 
of the memory of the soul.) 
I want to engage in the spiritualization of matter and the materialization of the spirit. 
I want to think of time as synchronic. 
I want to see all variants of a myth in a single imagery space without regard to 
historical context. 
I want to sift information from noise. 
I want to avoid the tedium of sectarianism and dogma. 
I want to consider language as an articulation of the limited to express the limited. 
I want to be at home with the paradoxical, the ambiguous, and the random. 
I want to eroticize time, consciousness, and human culture. 
I want to blur the boundaries between truth and fiction.

John Baldessari, 1982

bottom of page