# (hashtag)

GROUP SHOW / # (hashtag)
JUNE 29 - JULY 28, 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, JUNE 29, 6-9 PM
GALLERY HOURS: THU-SAT, 12-6 PM
Meno Parkas Gallery (Kaunas, Lithuania) and Sla307 Art Space (New York, New York) presents # (hashtag), a joint exhibition opening on Friday, June 29th at Sla307 Art Space. The exhibition runs from June 29th to July 28th.
The title, # (hashtag) serves as a marker that promotes the extraction of moments from the unstoppable stream of time. It encourages a keen focus on what is important and to stay in touch, while fixating on the flashes of clarity and awareness.
Hashtags (#) of the artists’ works begin to overlap, causing an extension of meaning and an introduction to new directions. The artworks selected for this exhibition represent a research process and search for a method rather than art production in modern vernacular.
Presented artists: AGNĖ JONKUTĖ (LT), ANGELA OKAJIMA-KEMPINAS (USA), AUŠRA ANDZIULYTĖ (LT), ROBERTAS ANTINIS (LT)
If asked, Robertas Antinis would say, “perhaps process will never end.” Once, artist was told by his father, Robertas Antinis, (also renowned sculptor and very important figure in Lithuanian art history) to stop at some point and begin to embody the idea. But rather, Robertas Junior is interested in the creative processes. He is constantly researching his own fields of experience and that of others’. He is earnestly determined to never become the slave of pure aesthetics. He is dedicated to experimenting with materials, forms, as well as teasing and provoking his viewers. His creative work is quite often connected with language and meanings of terms.
That is something in common with Angela Okajima-Kempinas. She is a ceramic artist gaining inspiration from the semantics of language and writing signs (in the Verse-a-tile series). Angela‘s conceptual works are made with brilliant, but not self-purposeful craftsmanship and glowingly clean esthetics, such as the white exclamation marks, which in a former incarnation were floral petals but in this instance, take the form of a human connection sign.
Aušra Andziulytė is a painter in every sense. From her life philosophy, perception, to her artwork, she continues her ongoing search for the special light sliding down the landscape. Her use of ripples of red and rust in her paintings are not depictions, but rather symbols taking root in nature. Aušra allows viewers to decode her work in their own manner.
Agnė Jonkutė also is interested in the use of light, not only in its image-revealing feature but on its physical effect. Light and time have become her paint and brushes. Agnė allows landscapes to imprint themselves on a paper. She chooses minimalistic, ecologic, environment, and human attitudes towards her creative work, using as little intervention as possible to allow life to flow in its own way.
These artists from different backgrounds and generations sit on the commonalities of contemplation and introspection, which brings forth questions of their constantly changing self, the analysis of signs, notions being born, and keeping to one’s individual method of identifying and capturing their self-moments in today‘s rapidly changing world.

The exhibition is a part of gallery's "Meno parkas" international-cultural exchange project „Art Line“.
The project is part financed by Lithuanian Council for Culture and Ministry of Culture.

www.sla307.com
www.menoparkas.lt/36789/parodos.html?paroda=46457