Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA to present a new exhibition of the legendary Lithuanian avant-garde art group Post Ars  

Exhibition opening at 6 pm on Wednesday, 9 April, 2025

Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art opens Stuff by the grouping Post Ars’ curated by Agnė Narušytė. The exhibition brings back the rebellious and brave past of the group, also highlights the relevance of their creative output today. The opening night will start with the Post Ars’ performance in the square in front of the museum building.  

 

“The creative productions of Post Ars are hard to sum up – multifaceted and constantly shifting, they elude commonly used definitions, but are always recognizable for their untamed will to ask uncomfortable questions and distrust “the rules” of the art field. Post Ars emerged in Kaunas in 1989, when these young artists undertook to carry on the resolution of the interwar group Ars and start a new art epoch in Lithuania, at the time reemerging as a free state. They realized that “changes in art are pressing, so who else, if not us, is going to initiate them?”    

 

 

Lithuanian avant-garde turned classic  

 

From the outstart, the group Post Ars won the reputation of provocateurs – the 1990 group’s exhibition in The Installations of Kaunas’ Artists received a lot of attention, but met with the resistance from the artists’ community and was closed within a few days. The title of the exhibition was the first instance of the official use in Lithuania of the term “installation”; Post Ars also introduced, into Lithuanian contemporary art parlance the concepts of “performance” and “action”, the terms commonly understood today. Thus, this avant-garde-turned-classics artistic practice of the contemporary art holds a place of significance in the development of Lithuanian art.  

 

The integrated influence of Fluxus and Dada led the artists to ignore the tightened, during soviet times, bounds of art. They were trying out music acts, assemblages, texts and printing, design, pedagogy, videoart, photography, perishable art, transformation by fire and land art, giving the place of prominence to texts. 

 

The original intent of the grouping was to attract artists from across possibly broader range of fields, but with time Aleksas Andriuškevičius (b. 1959), Robertas Antinis (b. 1946), Česlovas Lukenskas (b. 1959) and Gintaras Zinkevičius (b. 1963) emerged as the core of Post Ars. Their most intense period lasted till 2000, yet even afterwords, this alliance has been part of the contemporary art exhibitions, its members getting together for joined projects alongside with their intense individual artistic practice.  

 

 

Return into museum space after a ten-year intermission       

 

The exhibition of Post Ars at the Radvila Palace is held nearly ten years after their last appearance with their 2016 event The Score at Vilnius CAC. This unusual retrospective at the Radvila Palace is important for both, the Lithuanian art fans and the artists, who reunite for a joint action in a defined space after a long time.  

 

“The idea to invite the Post Ars artists to give an event at the Radvila Palace was inspired by our previous collaboration with the Latvian Contemporary Art Centre on an exhibition which introduced the creative legacy of the Latvian legendary avant-garde group NSRD, active in the 1980s. Enlightened on the Latvian art scene of the period, we shift our attention to Lithuania and the artistic processes that took place in our country on the eve of the restoration of independence and during its earliest years. The activity of Post Ars was a vital part of this change, and the current exhibition will demonstrate the ingenuity of the artists’ attempts to reform the Lithuanian art scene at the time and the relevance of their artistic ideas today”, Justina Augustytė, director of the Radvila Palace Museum of Art places the event into context.     

 

The artefacts from the history of the group’s activity and their most recent work will be displayed in ten rooms of the museum. Next to the archival photography and video, which take back to the beginnings of the group, the pieces produced by the artists jointly and individually at different periods of time will be on display. The exhibition links all the exhibits into a kind of multi-member installation, sorts of summing-up of the ideas and experience gained in 36 years, which at the same time reflect on contemporary issues. Visitors to the exhibition will be exposed to the diversity of means of expression and art making formats the grouping tested and preferred. The viewers will be invited to explore Post Ars’ unique symbols and metaphors, made easier to unlock with the help of the texts by the curator and the artists.  

 

The opening event of the exhibition, an outdoor performance in the square in front of the museum, is an opportunity to experience Post Ars’ performative style live.   

 

 

The interventions by the feminist activist group Cooltūristės  

 

From the very beginning of their collaborations, the artists invited helpers and contributors into their exhibitions, happenings, and the design process of artist books. This time the event includes Laima Kreivytė and the feminist activists’ group Cooltūristės, founded by her in 2005. The female artists’ interventions will expand and expand the Post Ars displays with new narratives and reveal the poetic harmonies, interruptions and deposits of sense we make of our time.   

 

The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of events: meetings with the artists and the exhibition curator, education evolutions and tours.  

 

 

The exhibition is on until June 29.  

 

 

Organizer Radvila Palace Museum of Art  

Project funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania  

Information partners: LRT, JCDecaux Lietuva 

Exhibition curator Agnė Narušytė 

Artists:  

Aleksas Andriuškevičius, Robertas Antinis, Česlovas Lukenskas, Gintaras Zinkevičius, Laima Kreivytė  and Cooltūristės 

Exhibition coordinators: Justina Augustytė, Viltė Visockaitė 

Architect Aleksandras Kavaliauskas 

Graphic design by Vytautas Volbekas 

Translator Erika Lastovskytė

 

​

Radvila Palace Museum of Art,
24 Vilniaus st, LT-01402, Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 250 5824

See also

Exhibition

Post Ars. Stuff