Žilvins Kempins. Portraits-fossils

The project “Portretai-fosilijos 2023” is a premise to return to a period of the history of Lithuanian art that is still not consistently studied – the 20th century. in the 10th decade. Reconstructing the project that took place in 1996 today does not aim to restore, repeat, stop or return time. An attempt is made to check the changed context. The sponge casts the faces of living people, and the casts are called fossils – fossilized remains of organisms or their imprints in rocks. The silent documents of people with their eyes closed in the 2023 project speak about the change of (self) portraiture in the age of digital image production, a changed approach to self- representation and identification. In 1996, when fine art in Lithuania went through a transition period, the (self) portrait was an unpopular genre, and today it is the opposite – it is an inseparable part of everyday life part The monochrome casts of various individuals’ faces in this exhibition are far more telling in terms of identity than millions of color digital images. Moreover, in such a work, the subjective view of the artist is not imposed, only a situation is created to see the real “me”. As the viewers move through the space, the portraits come alive visually – in the inverse play of light and shadows, they turn from negative to positive.