Deividas Vytautas Aukščiūnas’ film filled up, torn open stands at the intersection of the familiar and the taboo.
The familiar is highlighted through repeated references to pop culture, contemporaneity - in both its physical and online forms - and religious iconography.
Whereas the taboo appears in the way these disparate yet corresponding elements converge - through the sensual, intimate, and sometimes violent bodily proximity of the characters.
Nameless and discontinuous, bodies glide through the narrative with an obscureness that mirrors the fragmentary nature of the film itself. What unites them is the force of desire, the search for limit experiences that would surpass, even if for a brief moment, the constraints of their physical bodies.
In the resulting fever dream-like narrative, the status quo of the rational world breaks apart and, in its stead, new radical imaginaries emerge.
Deividas Vytautas Aukščiūnas (b. 1996, Chicago, USA) is a Lithuanian visual artist living and working between Berlin and Vilnius. Aukščiūnas received his MA in contemporary art practice from the Royal College of Art (UK) in 2022 and a BA in film from the University of Westminster (UK) in 2017. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Todestrieb at Generation & Display, London (2024), Escapismus at Kunstpunkt, Berlin (2024), Surface Tension at Des Bains, London (2024), Shells of the Self at Crash Club, Warsaw (2024), Flashbang at Vilnius Higher Education Institution (2023), Collective Healing Youth Club (ACT I) at Meno Parkas Gallery, Kaunas (2023), Audra at Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery, Kaunas (2023), Soft When Warm at Guts Gallery, London (2023), Spaces at Composers House, Vilnius (2021), Everything Forever at Sissy Club, Marseille (2021). Aukščiūnas was selected as one of the CIRCA PRIZE class of 2023 finalists with the video piece Collective Healing Youth Club (2023). In 2021 he received the JCDecaux award from the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) for his film tight grip, it makes me feel safe (2021).
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