| OPENING: 24.09.2021, 5 pm TIME: 24 – 28.10.2021 PLACE: Vytautas Magnus University Art Gallery “101” Muitinės g. 7, 44280 Kaunas, Lithuania LINK: GALLERY “101” I VDU VMU Art Gallery “101” invites to the exhibition “Grand Tour: Age of Pyramid and Postcolonial Pilgrimage” (curated by Josip Zanki) opening on September 24, 17:00.Registration to the opening event: https://forms.gle/rvicATzqR5ywLT6eAStarting reference of the artistic research based project “Grand Tour: Age of Pyramid and Postcolonial Pilgrimage” is tradition of Grand Tour. In late 18th and 19th century Nobile youth from Great Britain travelled to Continental Europe; Italy, Greece and Egypt. Origin of this travel was colonial idea these destinations represent the origin and base of Western (European) culture and arts. Grand Tour was based on research on architectonic, sculpture and painting heritage and ruins of old civilizations. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stated that he count his second birth from the day he step to Rome. Hidden aspect of Tour was macho colonial imagination on promiscuity of southern woman. According to Byron sexual education of macho youth included on Tour was based on sexual labour prices and perception that each Italian lady has several lovers. In his intimate life, Lord Byron proclaimed Countess Teresa Guiccioli ‘lady of my love’. One of the results of Grand Tour was fascination with the pyramids and sphinx’s, finally constructed as follies in the gardens of Nobile families in 19th century from Habsburg Monarchy to Germany and Great Britain. Grand Tour pilgrimages brought us on the other side mystic obsessions and relive of occultist ideas, contrary to Enlightenment ideas of transformation of the states through Social Contract and belief in History of Humanity as process of Irreversible Progress. Embodied presence in the real Great Pyramid in Giza of Napoleon or Richard Dadd shows us revival of esoteric tradition, started during Grand Tour and finally confirmed Year 1875 in New York City when Helena Petrovna Blavatsky established Theosophical Society.In the project “Grand Tour: Age of Pyramid and Postcolonial Pilgrimage” artistic research and field work have been realised in real space, and due to the Virus restriction in virtual reality (Cyber Space, according to William Gibson).Exhibition in VMU Art Gallery “101”, curated by Josip Zanki, introduces art works by Manolo Cocho, Mexico City; Rimantas Plunge, Kaunas; Jovana Popić, Berlin; Sarah Zelemati, Berlin; collaborative practice Postcolonial Pilgrimage (Josip Zanki and Academy of Fine Arts student’s Lara Ana Kulenović, Ingeborg Reichel and Luka Tomić), Zagreb. All together they analysed, created and critically represented various aspects of Grand Tour through different media and platform as video, painting, objects, performance and performativity action, print and photography. Exhibition “Grand Tour: Age of Pyramid and Postcolonial Pilgrimage” presented art works based on common platform: to re-construct and re-think colonial imagination of Others and Otherness as subconscious and mystical opposite to dominant Western Ego. |
GRAND TOUR: AGE OF PYRAMID AND POSTCOLONIAL PILGRIMAGE / PART 2
