Lithuania’s success on the global art stage may have its roots in the country’s close-knit and mutually supportive cultural community, finds Adrian Searle.
Holidaymakers lounge on an indoor beach, stretching out on towels and slathering one another in suncream. They play sudoku, fret and sing, while around them kids run among the supine pale bodies. There are ice creams, there is lassitude and threat. We catch the sunbathers’ thoughts and anxieties in song, as the imminence of ecological doom grows ever closer.
This was Sun and Sea (Marina) at last year’s Venice Biennale, which won Lithuania the international art show’s prestigious Golden Lion. The audience looked down on the work from above and even more people queued outside, as word got round that this was the one thing in the biennale not to be missed.
Compelling, heartbreaking, morbid and funny, Sun and Sea (Marina) was first presented in Lithuania in 2017, at the bottom of a large stairwell in Vilnius’s National Gallery of Art, an extensively remodelled, Soviet-era museum. Following Venice, the work is soon embarking on a global tour, taking in South Korea, Australia, Canada and Brazil, as well as London’s Barbican. So what do we know about the country and scene that produced such a world-beater? Are there more out there? ... Keep reading on The Guardian
Holidaymakers lounge on an indoor beach, stretching out on towels and slathering one another in suncream. They play sudoku, fret and sing, while around them kids run among the supine pale bodies. There are ice creams, there is lassitude and threat. We catch the sunbathers’ thoughts and anxieties in song, as the imminence of ecological doom grows ever closer.
This was Sun and Sea (Marina) at last year’s Venice Biennale, which won Lithuania the international art show’s prestigious Golden Lion. The audience looked down on the work from above and even more people queued outside, as word got round that this was the one thing in the biennale not to be missed.
Compelling, heartbreaking, morbid and funny, Sun and Sea (Marina) was first presented in Lithuania in 2017, at the bottom of a large stairwell in Vilnius’s National Gallery of Art, an extensively remodelled, Soviet-era museum. Following Venice, the work is soon embarking on a global tour, taking in South Korea, Australia, Canada and Brazil, as well as London’s Barbican. So what do we know about the country and scene that produced such a world-beater? Are there more out there? ... Keep reading on The Guardian