Organic Games by Karina Kazlauskaitė

January 24, 2022 - May 29

Palanga Amber Museum

Vytauto g. 17, LT-00101, Palanga

Paroda

Karina Kazlauskaitė is one of the few contemporary Lithuanian jewellers who naturally immersed herself in organics for quite some time. The symbiotic relationship with nature, which is increasingly being rediscovered by artists today, has been present in Kazlauskaitė’s work for decades. The reason for this is her organic, reverent and at the same time curious relationship with the rural reality that is inseparable from the world of nature. Not so long ago, animals were often kept in the same space where humans lived, then becoming their food. Such a way of life seemed organic and natural, as domestic animals, in exchange for warmth and care, gave their lives, meat, skin, bristles, and bladders, ensuring the survival of the humans. In her work, Karina Kazlauskaitė contemplates human relationship with flora and fauna as it is today, and translates her thoughts into the language of jewellery art. Using materials and objects that are not commonly used in Lithuanian contemporary jewellery, such as pig intestines, pig bladder, and parchment made from animal skin, she speaks of the links and multiple contradictions between nature and human culture. The artist finds it interesting that organic objects, that once were an inherent part of everyday life, today provoke unpleasant reactions, and what previously was considered natural, nowadays raises many questions – not only aesthetic but also ethical.

As a result, in her ninth solo exhibition, the artist changes her thinking and adjusts her dimensional approach. Inspired by early toys made from pig bladder and peas, she creates modern objects. Pig bladders become monumentally shaped rattles turned into jewellery. Bladder, once an animal organ, becomes a material for jewellery; once a part of a pig’s body, now it is turned into a conceptual human body adornment. Leather, tanned by the artist herself, is gold plated and turned into organic brooches and objects. As parchment, this material has similarities to paper, easily gives in to being folded into brooches, harmonicas or planes gracefully covering the body. In Kazlauskaitė’s work, even the intestines are turned into an aesthetic element of jewellery, enveloping pieces of amber and organically binding them into one whole.

Organic games speak about coexistence. About the fact that we are all a part of nature which sometimes steps out of line, and can be punished. It speaks about the fact that man plays with nature until its patience is lost and reminds us that we are just powerless toys in the hands of the natural elements. About the fact that we are each other’s toys. We are all one, and sometimes our bodies, instead of decomposing, go on living in different forms. What used to be unaesthetic, animalistic, organic here turns into components of modern jewellery, hidden like inclusions between organic peat briquettes and covered with domes of organic glass. And not accidentally so. Intestines and parchment, bladders and amber, a mineral of organic origin – all this, as Karina Kazlauskaitė puts it, speaks about organically perceived life.

Curator Jurgita Ludavičienė

Coordinator Regina Makauskienė

Architect Vladas Balsys

Sponsors: Klasmann-Deilmann GmbH, Vilnius Academy of Arts

Media sponsor LRT