Deva Bartninkaitė ir Paulius Rukas | Ever-passing present

MEMORY IN MATTER: EXHIBITION “EVER-PASSING PRESENT” RETURNS TO VILNIUS

On Thursday, April 11th, the duo exhibition “Ever-passing present” by Deva Bartninkaitė and Paulius Rukas will open at the Lithuanian Artists’ Association Gallery “Arka”, returning after a successful exhibition at Helsinki’s Katariina Gallery (March 7-30, 2025).

The exhibition, presented in Finland, returns to the Lithuanian cultural context enriched by Nordic audience reception. This curatorial project intertwines the artistic strategies of two different generation artists – Deva Bartninkaitė (b. 1997) and Paulius Rukas (b. 1977) – exploring the fields of materiality, time recording, and collective memory issues.
Through her explored themes – change and decay – Deva seeks to understand how shifts in history and technology affect our understanding of the environment and our relationships with it. She examines the VHS videotape era, which had a huge impact on people’s daily lives – from learning about other cultures to collecting films and the ability to capture moments of personal lives visually, thus allowing memory to be stored in yet another medium. However, this wave subsided with the advent of more convenient video recording and viewing tools, so videotapes today remain only an object of nostalgia. Deva Bartninkaitė’s installation consists of works in which linen fiber is combined with recorded VHS magnetic tapes through textile weaving. The used tape contains an intangible amount of visual information that is no longer directly accessible for viewing but is transformed into another visual surface through the gaze.

The foundation of Paulius Rukas’s work is capturing changing time and place. The exhibition presents an interactive photography installation along with fragile soil objects, which the artist develops in his ongoing “In situ” cycle, expressing the documentation of changing and ever-passing “time and position.” Rukas’s work pays considerable attention to location recording through the prism of analog photography, which, compared to digital photography, is characterized by a slower, more deliberate process requiring concentration, attention to detail, and the flow of time. Meanwhile, in this project, the artist aims to capture elusive moments by involving the viewer in interactive documentation circumstances, yet unable to predict their results.

In exploring collective memory and personal recollections, Bartninkaitė and Rukas’s works create a metaphorical documentation of changing present through ephemeral images of the past and the deconstruction of their formation process. In Deva’s textile works, VHS tape recordings stabilize captured images as newly visible narratives, while Paulius captures fragments of fleeting present in instant photographs, thus creating new contexts for them. The exhibition authors capture, preserve, and interpret memory through their works, exploring how the shifts and overlaps of time affect our perception of the ever-passing present.

Paulius Rukas (1977) – an artist whose work explores cultural identity, the interaction of space and time, the aesthetics of materiality, and historical memory. His works encompass geopolitical and social themes such as migration, grounding, and sense of place, which are revealed through small metal plastics, objects of various forms – from soil sculptures to photographs. His work strongly reflects site contextuality – in “space parasitism” projects, the artist uses local soil, emphasizing the specificity of a particular place, while experimental photography, inspired by “in situ” situations, explores themes of time flow and documentation.

Deva Bartninkaitė (1997) – a young generation artist who lives and creates in Vilnius. In 2022, she defended her bachelor’s degree in textile art and design at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. She continues her master’s studies here. Since 2019, she has participated in exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad. Some of them: “Sonnenfinsternis | Solar Eclipse” duo exhibition with German artist Matthias Lutzeyer, Galerie am Klostersee, Lehnin, Germany (2024); “Zoetropas II” group exhibition with artists Kopa and Marija Žiemytė, VAA Gallery “Akademija”, Vilnius, Lithuania (2024); YTAT’22 Young Textile Artists Triennial, “City Art Gallery” Lodz, Poland (2022), etc.

The exhibition at the “Arka” gallery will run until April 30th.

Photographic and video documentation will be conducted during the opening event. By participating in the event, you agree that your image may be published through the gallery’s communication channels for the purpose of promoting the exhibition.