Žilvinas Landzbergas

A two-week research and artist residency in London

28/10 – 10/11 2015

Public Artist Talk: Monday 9 November 2015, 7pm (doors open at 6.30)

Lithuanian Embassy, Lithuania House, 2 Bessborough Gardens, London SW1V 2JE. 

RSVP: rita.valiukonyte@urm.lt

Vanja Contemporary and AV17 Gallery are excited to announce a two-week research and artist residency with Lithuanian artist Žilvinas Landzbergas at Creekside Artist Studios in Bermondsey, London. This is the third appearance of Lanzbergas in the UK after his solo exhibition at Modern Art Oxford (2005) and presentation of his work at Frieze Art Fair (2009).

Landzbergas in his big scale sculpture installations uses material, colour and light, as well as objects, which all together create symbolic and critical references to the social surroundings usually intertwined with reflections on his personal experience. During his intensive two-week stay at Creekside Artist Studios, using the rich environment that London has to offer and taking inspiration from the city’s diverse music, fashion and theater scene, the artist will create a complex sculptural composition which will be both reflection of the stay and the development of the long- standing work process. 

In the previous installations the artist often tended to create a relationship with the immediate space and past and current time. The separate elements in these works are bind together by associations and the logic of fairy tales. Of no less importance among the objects are the drawings that construct meta-narratives. They deal thoroughly with research and reflection upon the selected object and theme, which finally assume the shape of independent artworks. Using ordinary visual means, colour and line, Landzbergas divides playfully a seamless space into closed territories with strict boundaries. The new installation work will embody the same idea and design logic and will include hand made wall paper patterns, inspired by different floral, psychedelic and classical ornament aesthetics, various masks and a small scale building model.

About the artist:

Žilvinas Landzbergas was born in 1979 in Kaunas. He currently lives and works in Vilnius. In 2004, he graduated from the Department of Sculpture at Vilnius Academy of Art. In 2001, he studied for a semester at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Plymouth. From 2005 to 2007, he spent two years on the De Ateliers postgraduate artist’s residency in Amsterdam. In 2008, he received the main award of the modern and contemporary art publisher Thieme Art.

About Creekside Artist Studios:

Creekside Artists is an artist-run co-operative established in the year 2000. The Studio provides affordable studio space for artists working in all disciplines in Bermondsey, Southeast London. The co-operative actively promotes artist by organising Open Studio exhibitions.

The collaboration:

The residency is part of an ongoing collaboration programme between AV17 Gallery (Vilnius, Lithuania) and the UK based online art gallery Vanja Contemporary, supported by the Lithuanian Embassy in London and the Lithuanian Council for Culture.

The collaboration programme started in May 2015 with the photography exhibition ‘(De)Construct’ in Vilnius showing works of the two London based artists Edurne Aginaga and Pietro Catarinella.

(AV17) GALLERY was established in February 2011 and is the only gallery in Lithuania, which concentrates its activity on both, conceptual visual arts and contemporary jewellery. Monthly changing contemporary art exhibitions present young local and foreign artists. This is the third international collaboration project organized by (AV17) gallery, where foreign artists have the opportunity to exhibit their art in Lithuania, and contemporary Lithuanian artists are presented in different places of Europe. Previous projects took place in Milan and Bologna.