Addressing his fascination with naiveté, Narkevicius documents a small group of young Lithuanian boys who have just started a band, interspersing shots of their wintertime surroundings in Vilnius. Pop or rock music has never been fully developed in Lithuania as a means of self expression, and no one Lithuanian pop musician has reached international acclaim.
Narkevicius films these young idealists and explores their international ambitions, asking them questions about their vision of the future and their reflections on the political situation and their cultural environment.
About the artist
Deimantas Narkevicius was born in 1964 in Utena, Lithuania and lives and works in Vilnius. He graduated from the Art Academy in Vilnius as a sculptor and spent a year in London in 1992/93. On his return to Lithuania he was concerned with site-specific objects but a strong interest in narrative led him to record interviews and conversations with artists. This process evolved into an exploration of different narrative structures through film and video, the work for which Narkevicius is now best known. Narkevicius is one of the most consistent and widely recognised Lithuanian artists on the international art scene. He represented his country at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 and exhibits at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 in Utopia Station curated by Molly Nesbit and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Since 1992 he has exhibited extensively around the world in group shows at many significant contemporary art venues and events. He showed at Manifesta II in Luxemburg in 1998 and has exhibited in London, Paris, Brussels, Vilnius, Manchester, Dublin, Vienna, Brussels, Helsinki, Stockholm, Zurich, Rotterdam, Melbourne and many other cities. Solo shows include Either true or fictitious, at FRAC Pays de la Loire in France in 2003 and Deimantas Narkevicius Project at the Kunstverein Munich in 2002.
…interspersing shots of wintertime Vilnius with footage of a local, moony indie band performing a jangly guitar-led song in a sparsely furnished room, the piece is far from MTV. Narkevicius spoke about wanting to capture a sense of naiveté in the piece…It certainly comes across.
Laura Allsop, Art Review
