The Dazzled Eye Lost Its Speech

About

“The Dazzled Eye Lost Its Speech”*

Artist Julija Pociūtė uses reflective surfaces to explore the illusion of time and the relationship between reality and fiction, the object and its reflection. She is interested in the interactions between personal and collective memory. In her work, she attributes to reflection the dimension of temporality that lies in the thin thread connecting the reflective surface and that which is beyond it. Thanks to its physical properties and the symbolic charge of reflection, the author activates the individual memory of the perceivers, and by manipulating their gaze, evokes their excessive perception of reality. Her oeuvre unfolds like fragmentary sequences of memory and experience, in whose processuality one can sense a narrative of decay, and considers the temporality of being that the viewer perceives.

In her latest exhibition, the author creates a condensed multi-layered reality. Using the synthesis of reflections and light along with the canonical composition of sounds, she presents illuminated and sculptural objects and a video work that multiply and (re)construct the coordinates of reality as well as complement and enhance the sensory experience. The narrative of tonal vibration that emerges among the objects of research due to the author's penetration into his (in) materiality, becomes a medium of audio and visual register, characterized by organic mode that covers the entire exhibition space. By turning images into a reproduction of digitized reality, the artist constructs illusory memory that acts in her works as a medium for (non)recording the perceptions of the ever-passing present filled with flashes of sounds and images.

The title of the exhibition encodes a spontaneous impression, a zone of the activation of gaze, along with a lack of voice broadcasting the sound. All of these components interact with the viewer’s personal experiences, memories, and imagination to capture an intangible plane of going through space and time. Minimalist music, the vibrations of overlapping sounds, fading reflections, ephemeral light, and the temporary experience of the viewer — the “stunned eye lost its speech“ – become a catalytic transferal of illusory memory and an ever-changing communication between the author and perceiver of the image.

In this way, the exhibition builds a procedural process with a minimal possibility of delaying the passing present that marks the interruption of time in space and intervenes in the viewer's consciousness and field of vision. By constructing an interaction of photography, unrecorded reflections, performative images and sounds, the artist captures the temporality of image and sound and creates conditions for everyone to immerse themselves in an autonomous state of listening into the space of her artwork. This exhibition is an irritating crack, inside which the volatile experiences of time broaden our perception of the present.

Evelina Januškaitė

Julija Pociūtė is contemporary artist. She mainly works in the field of installation art and contemporary media. By combining photography, glass art, various illuminating and reflective objects, and video installations in her oeuvre, she explores the relationship between materiality and its intangible expressions. Julija Pociūtė has organized eleven solo exhibitions and participates in many group exhibitions in Lithuania and other countries. Her works have been acquired by museum collections in Denmark and Spain. The artist is also one of the curators of “Vitrum” international festival of glass art, and works as a teacher of 4D art objects studies program at Vilnius Academy of Arts.

*Vocal canon “The Dazzled Eye Lost Its Speech” by Rytis Mažulis

Exhibition is supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Lithuanian Artists' Association.

Gallery's working hours: II-V 11-18:30, VI-VII 11-16