Gervickaite Gabriele
Broadcast, 2013, plastic board, mixed media, 200×100 cm
Who’s Beyond the Horizon, 2013, plastic board, mixed media, 250×276 cm
Operation Space Surgery II, 2012, paper, mixed media, 100×70 cm
Operation Space Surgery, 2012, ppaper, mixed media, 100×70 cm
A Prototype of a Technobody, 2012, paper, mixed media, 100×70 cm
A Cosmo Body, 2011, paper, mixed media, 80×55 cm
Skeleton No.5, 2010, paper, mixed media, 104×60 cm
My studio is a surgery room where I cut up electrical tapes and turn them into torsos. Here I reorganize body parts and bones. By exploring the body as a medium, the surgical process as performance and the relationship between the two, I construct a cyborgian organism. I design life-sustaining systems for this hybrid.
My works are charged with eroticism, because this surgical operation triggers queer intimacies. When bodies get in touch, hierarchies between them, repressed phantasies and silenced phobias are stripped bare.
Education
2011 Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, Painting, MFA
2009 Umea Art Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden (NordPlus program), MFA.
2007 Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, Painting, BFA.
Selected shows
Solo shows
2013 Thursday Review, Gallery Vartai, Vilnius (LT)
2012‘Technobodies’12’, Young Artist Prize, KLAIPĖDA Culture Communicaton Center (LT).
2011‘Techno BODIES’, a gallery ‘Akademija’, Vilnius (LT).
Group shows
2013 “Reverse Perspective”, Vilnius Graphic Art Centre, gallery “Kairė – dešinė”.
2012 Kaunas Biennial (LT)
2012 Interdisciplinary art project ‘PRO-‘, Visual Arts centre of Jonas Mekas, Vilnius (curator, participant), (LT)
Art Critic On…
The works of Gabrielė Gervickaitė stood out already while she was studying painting at Vilnius Academy of Art. Two trends, actively promoted by teachers, prevail here: the expressive one of Jonas Gasiūnas and Henrikas Čerapas, and the conceptual one of Kostas Bogdanas. Surely, young painters follow global trends as well; many have learned the lessons of Luc Tuymans. Using a wide arsenal of available expressive means, Gabrielė finds her themes and way of speaking, strongly diverging from the dominant trends. The artist transforms the struggle between the expressive and the conceptual gestures, conveyed by the dilemma of painting/becoming, into one of gluing and deconstructing. She combines live expression and conceptual gesture by employing not only painterly, but also medical materials and technologies. We all know the story of Frida Kahlo – she began her creative work after suffering a trauma in her youth, when during a bus crash a metal rod pierced her, and she had to spend a long time in bed. Unable to walk, she began painting self-portraits while looking into the mirror. She learned everything herself. In Gabrielė’s case, orthopedic surgery and leg stretching with the help of special immobilizers have been a part of her life since her childhood. For her, art is not therapy, but rather professional activity that reveals not only her life experience but also a distinctive worldview. The four pillars of the latter are personal approach, vulnerability, hybridity and metonymicity. I have already touched upon the personal approach.
Laima Kreivytė
Key Words of Creative Practice: body, cosmos, mechanism, plastic, operation, cyborg, intimacy, performance
Artists I Admire: Bob Flanagan (film: “Sick – The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist”)