#rockelmann

EXCHANGEGroup ShowAndreas ErminasNerijus ErminasRimantas MilkintasRafal PiesliakOPENING: November 24th, 2016, 7–9pm

DURATION: November 25th, 2016 – January 28th, 2017

ROCKELMANN & is proud to  present the group show EXCHANGE in collaboration with (AV17) GALLERY. The exhibition brings together the work of four well-known Lithuanian sculptors and installation artists. Culturally, the exhibition is an exchange of ideas between (AV17) GALLERY in Vilnius and ROCKELMANN& in Berlin. Thematically, the artists’ works also embody crossing points: they enact a visual and referential exchange between formal sculpture and more everyday, quotidian objects or materials. Nerijus Erminas and Rafael Piesliak create compositions or inclusions of ornamental and often evocative objects — cut glass vases, ceramic tiles, functional and ornate lamps — which have the effect of cutting through cultures. They evoke images of homes and informal spaces like a stream of details that place the artists’ work in a certain time and place. Yet the artists also cross these tropes with formal references to 20th century sculpture. The effect locates one history so firmly within the other that the works teeter between sculptural references and their evocative motifs, hinting at the formal underpinnings of ornament and the decorative origins of abstract sculpture. The other two artists in the exhibition, Rimintas Milkintas and Andrius Erminas, play with formal elements in perfectly opposing ways: Milkintas’s work embodies modernist sculpture, playing with formal sculptural elements such as balance and volume; Erminas’ work physically plays with space as though it were addressing the concerns of modernist sculpture while appearing to be an altered functional object—the kind of container that might transport sculpture from Vilnius to Berlin.