Danas Aleksa
HOUSE BY THE RIVER
16 March – 17 April 2026
VDA Gallery “5 malūnai”, 1st and 2nd floors
Opening: 16 March, 6 pm
Curator: Marija Marcelionytė-Paliukė
Perhaps there was meant to be a watermill here, with a constantly turning wheel converting the murmur of flowing water into electrical energy? Or perhaps the mill is here after all, only our daily walks to lectures have covered that spinning wheel with a veil of routine. Maybe the energy does not circulate through the building’s cables but through the blood vessels and neural pathways of the people inside it.
Most of you probably remember something from your own life connected to a river. From childhood I remember swimming in the deeper parts of a small village stream; I remember my parents wading into the shallows, plunging their hands among the grasses and tossing the fish they caught onto the bank. I remember when a dam was built and a pond appeared in the centre of the village. I remember hot summer days at the Valakampiai beach. I remember walking home from school in Žirmūnai to Antakalnis across the frozen ice of Neris.
Vilnelė accompanied me constantly during my student years, whether walking to lectures or lying stretched out on the grass in the park after classes. Later, about a kilometre from where Vilnelė flows into Neris, a new bridge was built, and the meadow next to it was turned into a leisure area that eventually became a favourite gathering place for city residents. Not long after, beneath that bridge, watched by everyone, Jurgis Kairys flew past. Some time later, inspired by that flight, and watched by no one except Evaldas Jansas’s video camera, I swam across the river at that very spot - from one bank to the other - already as an artist searching for the origins of my connection to the river.
In the past, ecological issues were not as pressing; the threats created by modern ways of living were only faintly sensed. Today this topic has become the background of our lives and is increasingly permeating the field of art as well. Last autumn I performed a piece near the Kaunas Hydroelectric Power Plant - my second work dedicated to a river, this time Nemunas. At the bottom of the dam I filled two buckets with water, carried them to the top, and poured them out. As that water flowed down the dam again, how much electrical energy could it generate?
Now, as I write this text for the exhibition annotation, January is bitterly cold and the radiator in the room is blazing at full capacity. The bill will be frightening. I wonder, if things continue like this, will it still be possible to walk from Žirmūnai to Antakalnis across the frozen Neris?
Danas Aleksa (b. 1971, Vilnius) is a conceptual interdisciplinary artist working with sculpture, object, performance, and video. The main axes of his practice are time and space and the relationships between them. Fragments of everyday situations, often tied to a specific location, frequently become leitmotifs in his work. The artist is also interested in how society and nature adapt to constantly changing conditions and to the technological progress of civilization. Like a continuous observer, he analyses the surrounding environment, disrupts it in various ways, and waits for its response.
Danas Aleksa received his MA in Sculpture from the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 1997. He has held more than 20 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad. Since 2012 he has been a member of the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association. He lives and works in Vilnius.
Graphic design of the exhibition – titas antanas vilkaitis
The exhibition is partially supported by Vilnius Academy of Arts.
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