Exhibition ‘Channels’ by Aurelija Maknytė

The exhibition ‘Channels’ is the first comprehensive presentation of Aurelija Maknytė’s work, surveying an artistic practice spanning nearly three decades and showcasing both well-known pieces and works that have rarely been exhibited before.

One of the exhibition’s main themes is light. Fragments of the series Light Therapy I–III, recreated especially for the exhibition, reveal the artist’s long-standing interest in light as both a prerequisite for the emergence of the technological image and an artistic medium in its own right.

For over a decade, Maknytė amassed a personal television archive, recording excerpts of television programmes and films onto VHS tapes and using them to create video works, fictional autobiographies, and new narratives. The exhibition also revisits the experimental project CAC TV, to which the artist contributed.

In Maknytė’s practice, VHS tapes, photographic films, floppy disks, slides, video recordings, and found objects become not only repositories of memory but also works of art. For her, collecting is a way of forging new connections between seemingly unrelated things.

Nature plays a particularly important role in the exhibition. Observations of plants, animals, and the landscape conducted on the plot of land by the Širvinta River that the artist calls ‘Earth’ become an integral part of her creative work. Objects derived from the natural environment are displayed in the courtyard of the National Gallery of Art.

Curators: Inesa Brašiškė, Agnė Narušytė
Architect Beatričė Mockevičiūtė
Graphic designer Jonė Miškinytė
Sponsor: Exterus: Fundermax
Partner: Meno Avilys
Media partners: Delfi, JCDecaux
Organised by the LNMA National Gallery of Art