BLACKENED | BARBORA MATONYTĖ
10/29 –11/22/2024
Opening: October 29th (Tuesday), 6 PM at the VAA gallery Artifex (Gaono str. 1, Vilnius).
The viewer is presented with an experience that interprets the world of music through the prism of a visual artist. The main dominant topic of this exhibition is the exploration of the relationship between psychological distress, fear, aggression, and the consumers of the heavy music culture niche. The author researches these embodied uncanny themes in the heavy metal music subgenres fairly empirically and personifies them. Such fears like the sense of impending death, uncontrollable aggression, and senseless destruction are juxtaposed in parallel with their sculptural representations.
An ambivalent mood accompanying the exhibition seeks both to emphasize and to reduce the support of radical positions on the aforementioned topics in today's context. The stereotypical worldview model and the principle of creating black-and-white world viewing values are criticized: starting from the image of a female artist in the art scene (exaggerated sensitivity within the subtle means of expression) to the portrayal of the ultra-macho metal subculture representative.
Exhibition technician: Liudvikas Kesminas
Text: Saulė Elena Jurgelytė
Sponsor: Alaus Namai
_
BIO****
Barbora Matonytė (1996) is a young generation artist based in Vilnius, Lithuania. In 2022 she graduated with a MA degree in contemporary sculpture studies in Vilnius Academy of Arts and has been actively participating in exhibitions since 2016. Her field of creative activity is best described as a search for various sculptural expressions in an expanded field, space and experiential plane. Her work in the interdisciplinary medium is clearly distinguished by two basic fields, i.e. the discourses of visual art installations, sound art and the possibilities of combining them. In her practice the creator often collaborates with representatives of other art fields and researches (sub)cultural phenomena, communication methods of closed communities and tries to refute worldview models that are based on stereotypes.
