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Born in 1977, lives and works in Vilnius. Ugnius Gelguda has got his BA in Visual art and MA in Photography and Media arts from Vilnius Academy of Fine Art, where he studied in 2000-2006. Since 2000 the artist is actively participating in the exhibitions. He has received various awards and recognitions: The Prize of Lithuanian Photographers’ Association in 2001 (for the exhibition “Debut”), The Best Professional Artist’s Debut Award of The Ministry of Culture of Lithuania in 2006, Moscow International Art Festival Prize in 2007 for the installation “Žalgiris“.
Since 2000, Ugnius Gelguda is successfully working as an individual artist and collaborating with other artists in various interdisciplinary projects.
Photography is the primary media that Ugnius Gelguda uses to express his ideas; however his artistic portfolio includes video and audio-visual installations as well.
In the last few years two tendencies emerged in the artist‘s work: the critical inquiry into the media of photography and documentation of different social gatherings. In the first case, he moves away from the wide panoramic compositions and realistic images and concentrates more on a fragment and detail. Through these means of expression Ugnius Gelguda is searching for links between photography and individual visual memory. In this way, he attempts to reveal the limits of photography, as the document that confirms the truth, and the inability of this media to be resistant to rewritings of history.
Ugnius Gelguda‘s documentary photography includes wide variety of social gatherings, such as the families in „Living Together“ (2004), lives of sub-cultural centers in „Green Club“ (2001-2003), club culture fragments in „Gravitation“ (2007) and accidental street gatherings. Accepting an open position, avoiding universality and pretence, the artist freely migrates, participates, observes and documents the immediate life of heterogeneous contemporary society.
The photography of Ugnius Gelguda can be approached as a non-hierarchical map of the social field. It doesn‘t provide any statements, nor confirmations. The artist views the society as a coexistence of others, which does not yield to the rationality and logic. Connecting the social discourse of photography with the parallel critique of the media, the artist re-traces the strategy of the social photography while eliminating the intentions of truth and documenting.
Contact information
E-mail: ugnius.gelguda(at)gmail.com
Official website of Ugnius Gelguda
Artworks
308 meter
35mm film transferred to digital format, 2 channels, 6 min 14 sec, 2009.
308 meter is a datum-point where a drama of a fictitious family, existing only in a film, begins or ends. In 308 meters of 35 mm film an illusion of a plot is created, which is made through clichés established in cinematography. The film analyzes the language of cinema itself, and its (un)perceived influence to our perception of everyday experiences.Cameraman: Vilius Mačiulskis
Solo for the photography gallery (together with Neringa Černiauskaite, photo-installation, slide projector, photoslides), 2009
The project is dedicated to rarely attended art spaces. It is the artwork’s solo performance to the empty photography gallery. A selection of such particular space was determined by the media of the artwork itself – a projection of photo slides.
The artwork originated from an accident in one of the most tourists-favorite city, where whole the visual material made and collected during the travel was stolen. Namely this popularity of the city allowed the possibility to “restore” the lost material through pictures made by other people, who were in the same city at the same time. Thus the images, selected from virtual pictures repositories, create fictional, possible memories. Easily multiplied and repetitive digital photographs then were transferred into slides – media of the past.
Continually projecting the fictional images in the empty space, the slide projector thus raises questions about the notion of exhibition space and easily modified memory.
Title of the exhibition Solo to the photography gallery determines the absence of the official exhibition opening – it is a private relation of the space and the artwork.
Spacetime: People / Friction (together with Antanas Sutkus, photo-installation, 6 slide projectors, photoslides), 2008
Ugnius Gelguda, having also chosen anonymous passers-by for the objects of his photographs, highlights a typical position of the present-day city dweller – alienation and seclusion. The photoartist does not make an attempt to document and perpetuate his environment or events, on the contrary, he ‘scorches’ the identification in the image by means of the camera flash. He interprets a photo as a subjective reflection of the relationship between space and time. It is not only the phenomenon of memory as an accumulation of experience that the artist’s audiovisual installation, integrated into the classic’s retrospective, ‘attacks’, it also reaches the origin of photography as the document of reality. Rubbing off the boundaries between reality and illusion, he refutes a monumental function of photography to documentarily reflect the world.
Margarita Matulytė, Curator of the project
Nightscripts. Photo-installation (digital photography, video, 5 lcd monitors), 2008
”Nightscripts” - intimate chornicles of a personal night life. Notes of the cyber-society's anthropologist, who refused goods of virtual pleasures for sake of his research. Suggested simulated sexuality is exchanged for constant efforts of provoking pure intimacy. Images of the “Nightscripts” are not just litter of the internet space, but documentation of a direct personal contact.
Gravitation
Series of photographs (black and white photography 100 x 70, Polaroid’s 10 x 10), 2007.
This series of photographs consist of two parts. One part represents the documentary photographs that capture the fragments of club culture. Another one is a remix of documentary photographs and series of Polaroid shots that question the longevity of visual memory. The artist captures the fragments of club culture. Ignoring the surroundings, he concentrates fully on the protagonists of the club culture: their portraits, style and movement. In that way he confirms that personalities (protagonists) have the central significance in history.
Memory leak (FRICTION)
Audiovisual installation (3 video projections on one screen), 2007.
Ugnius Gelguda: “The installation consists of three projectors projecting the slides in accidental and non-synchronized manner, thus creating a visual noise.” The excessive lighting and blurry shapes are characteristic to the slide images. “The artist deliberately burns the memory leaving only the basis of the image and in that way denying its monumental significance…The installation of projected slides questions the photography as the bearer of information, as an attribute of the memory and a document of the past. The slides in the installation do not capture any significant personal moments, environment or any fragments of the past. Barely identifiable locations and situations easily yield to the principle of recreation and interpretation of the history”.
Žalgiris
Audiovisual installation (projection of 3 slides, 300 x 1400 cm, sound), 2006.
The audiovisual installation consists of the sound recording of the staged medieval battle and the static panorama projected in three slides. The slides capture the physical and emotional exaltation of the crowd at the rock concert. Employing the iconography of the historical painting “The Battle of Žalgiris” by Jan Matejko (monumental, dynamic, frontal composition of the panoramic projection), the soundtrack, the title of the project, Ugnius Gelguda deconstructs the principal of rewriting of history.
Living Together. Contemporary Conventional/Unconventional Family
Series of photographs (11 photographs, 100x75) and text, 2004.
The series of photographs “Living Together. Contemporary Conventional/Unconventional Family (2004)” captures the portraits of conventional and unconventional families. It is represented together with the comments of the people in the photos. They are telling their experiences of creating their families. The artist includes the conventional families, based on the marital relationship between man and the woman, and non-conventional ones – such as homosexual couples or cohabitants. That way he aims to present variety of forms of familial coexistence. Parallel to the inquiry into the definition of a family, the project uncovers the issues of tolerance. Some families agreed to take part in this project provided their portraits wouldn’t be exhibited in the country of their residence.
U.Gelguda: “The series attempts to question the concept of contemporary family, the integration of non-conventional families into society, the societal habits and attitudes. The photos are complemented with the comments of the families that are taking part in the project. The project took place in Lithuania and Latvia in 2004 and it involved several families. The families of non-conventional sexual orientation who live in Lithuania refused to take part in the project, because of the prevailing statements of homophobia and intolerance towards “the others”.
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