Stasys Museum is proud to present, in collaboration with La BF15, an exhibition by Lithuanian-born artist Stasys Eidrigevičius. Stasys has had a sentimental connection with Lyon since Patrick Penot — the former director of the Théâtre des Célestins — invited him to create posters for the 2009–2010 theatre season. Time passed… 15 years later, Stasys is coming back to Lyon with a different genre of his works — his so-called one-line drawings. In the exhibition titled “Lines” we introduce small-scale drawings on paper (1999) and large-scale on linen textile (2023) – which is something deeply rooted in Lithuanian culture. Stasys’ drawings take inspiration from this tradition too. These drawings depict one of the most common subjects in the artist’s works — the humanoid body, often featuring body parts augmented with household or farmhouse tools, or other human beings, animals, buildings or masks. These humanoids look so similar, as though they are created, multiplied from one body. Perhaps in Stasys’ drawings, the masked character is the true person crawling out from the faceless body to reveal the alienation of a personality — or maybe the faceless body is just a pretender and the masked humanoids and animals are actually the true and reliable ones? Remarkably, Stasys juxtaposes animals and humanoids. He portrays them in a physically tight relationship as if forced to coexist: they are connected with ropes, sticks or body parts. We have a vital connection with nature. We are nature.
Humanoid creatures with masks, and animals represented with detailed faces express anxiety, suspicions, and even our fear of faceless humanoids. The posture of the faceless bodies expresses the state either of the reluctant fighter or the abandoned, helpless victim. Imagine standing far away, but watching a crowd of people attending a protest or recruited onto the battlefield. It would be impossible to detect facial details, but the posture of bodies could disclose people’s emotions. In Stasys’ drawings, all those faceless characters could be any one of us, dragged out from the crowd and dropped into the white vacuum which we would have to survive. These images are also reminiscent of the drawing “The Beekeepers” (1569) by Pieter Bruegel, which shows a group of beekeepers on the edge of a village. Portrayed with long, protective clothes and wicker masks, they look similar but anonymous, and so create an atmosphere of menace.
Stasys portrays humanoid creatures who are not just faceless but who also have amputated limbs. Nevertheless, his bodies are still able to move and stay alive with the help of other humans, body parts, objects, plants or animals, though in a rather constrained, uncomfortable and restricted capacity. The artist’s subjects and objects combine into a continuous, uninterrupted chain that evokes a great sense of balance. Vivid intensity shown in the lines that make up his scenes demonstrates that these augmented characters are fighting for better living conditions, for existential freedom. The inspiration for such peculiar scenes comes from Stasys’ childhood experience. He lived in a little village in Lithuania, in a disorderly wooden structure of a house, run down with dripping roofs, filled with bellowing, roaring farm animals. Even though during the Soviet period Stasys emigrated to Poland, his memories from childhood are continuously drifting around him and they settle on paper or canvas with an allegorical approach. Within the line drawn on the surface, the experiential and imaginative world of Stasys begins.
Curator Lina Albrikienė
Architect Darius Baliukevičius
Graphic designer Rūta Rancevaitė
The exhibition is supported by the Lithuanian Culture Institute.
Opening 7th of November, at 6 pm
Visiting exhibition from 8th – 16th of November, 2024