On 7 May (Tuesday) at 17:00, the European Parliament will host a meeting of the European Parliament's Committee on the Protection of Human Rights. "Audrius Balčėtis's solo photography exhibition "Street Studio" opens at Prospektas Gallery (43 Gedimino Ave., Vilnius) on 17th of May, 17th of July. The exhibition will be open until 25 May.
In this exhibition, although it is called "Street Studio", we see a merger of two series. "Waterway" is another of the artist's well-known series, which he has already exhibited and published several times. It is a series about aqueducts - ancient water systems that have stretched across civilised countries since the prehistoric times of the Roman or Ottoman Empires. In photographing aqueducts, the author's first aim is to show their architectural grandeur. Often, he "uses" the human figure to reveal this, when the scale of the surviving structure becomes immediately apparent. The play of light and shadow, the environment and the landscape, and finally the aesthetics of the image itself are also important to him. In this exhibition, apart from the allusion to the waterway, street photography dominates. In this way, we can see that the photographer not only admires archaic engineering solutions for water transport, but also the life around them.
According to the art historian Tomas Pabedinskas, in the photographer's works, picturesque, sometimes exotic environments become memorable compositions and a background for the narration of everyday life with its little adventures. The photographer's vision is sensitive to the part of human activity that can be observed in public: in cafés, markets, museums, open windows of houses, town squares and streets. It is the notion of street photography (in the broadest sense) that most accurately describes the work of A. Balčėtis. The author returns this genre to its classical forms and traditional content, emphasising the aesthetic impression and the clarity of the narrative conveyed by the decisive moment.
On the other hand, the photographer does not limit himself to the aesthetic searches that transform cities into compositions of geometric shapes and people into anonymous passers-by. Balčėtis's works include those in which the photographer captures people he meets up close, paying attention to their appearance, posture and faces. In some of the photographs, the person even becomes the main and only subject of the photograph. Of course, these people's characters seem memorable in themselves, and their faces are expressive.
However, psychological portraits are the main focus of A. Balčėtis' work, Tomas Pabedinskas further develops this idea. The author more often captures those moments of street life in which one can recognise the climax of the story, an unexpected coincidence, and often a photographer's humorous observation. It is not surprising, then, that the author's works feature scenes that have already become classics of the street photography genre: owners and their animals enjoying human pleasures, pigeons being fed in town squares, elegant citizens spending time in cafés or "ordinary" people visiting art museums, looking imperfect in the midst of the art, and of course romantic couples in the city.
The photographer's work opens up related but different, complementary perspectives: when travelling, photography allows you to capture what surprises you, what seems unusual; at home, photography allows you to marvel at familiar surroundings and life. Thus, one could say that the photography of A. Balčėtis both asks questions and surprises with answers at the same time.
Audrius Balčėtis was born in 1968 in Panevėžys. He graduated from Kaunas University of Technology in 1998 with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, and in 2012 he graduated from the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, M.V. Lomonosov University of Moscow, Faculty of Philosophy, graduating with a Master's degree. The author participates in exhibitions and publishes books. His main artistic theme is related to aqueducts, the history of the waterway and the social transformations around these engineering and architectural structures.
