Ruta Putramentaite:
here all is distance
there it was breath
opening: 9. 6. 2022 from 6 pm
10. 6. – 3. 7. 2022
curator: Mariana Serranová
For several years, Ruta Putramentaite’s sensitivity has been focused on the asymmetrical relationship between man and nature. Her works are a fragmented metaphor of the environment, reporting on the indigestibility of human activity. She puts into context different conceptions of the passage of time, of life and of the decomposition of organic and inorganic matter. In one breath we perceive the endless biochemical reaction of the universe of which we are a part as a profound existential experience. But, paradoxically, with the knowledge that our human age will never have enough time to fully comprehend it.
By recycling discarded, dysfunctional vehicles, that were part of human reproduction and movement on the earth's surface, into exhibition artifacts, Ruta communicates with the ethical premises of the new materialism. The long life of industrial products, their slow decomposition and their subsequent journey into the earth - with all this, the artist gives nature and geological time a far more optimistic perspective than we as humans can attribute to ourselves. We now know that the garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean has exceeded the size of Texas and is approaching the size of all of North America. The time for recycling the tons of industrial materials drenched by seawater has expired, many materials are mechanically breaking down into tiny particles. Likewise, human movement, activity, and production are tied to mineral resources, its gravity, and the nutrient processes that include water, which is involved in the chemical process of decomposing organic and inorganic matter.
The only thing that remains from an unburned body are the bones. It is one of the hardest tissues in the human body, and ions of calcium, phosphate and other minerals can be released and stored there as needed. Just as stones are subject to weathering by the action of water and carbon dioxide, bacteria, algae, lichens, mosses and higher plants enter the process of rocks and minerals, whose death produces a thin layer of organic matter as the basis of soil fertility. The scientific description of natural cycles and evolution allows us to see our existence as a kind of external experience. We gain insight into the continuity of the material world, whose laws transcend us.
The ecological engagement within us largely takes place in irrational territory. In the domain of art, more than anywhere else, problematized phenomena are freed from their original context somewhere in reality to be recalled as symbolic images here and there. Through Ruta Putramentaite's installation we observe the interconnectedness of industrial and natural processes. The artist critically breaks down the separateness of these and other categories. Instead, she focuses on their physical basis and their mutual ingestion. In elaborating the connections and relationships between discarded industrial debris, natural materials and soil, we observe how the tooth of time and the general degradation of materials returns human activity to the earth once again. We feel that the key to understanding the physical world is an awareness of our corporeality and mortality.
(transl. Vanda Krutsky)
The program of the Jeleni Gallery is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Council, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, City District Prague 7, GESTOR – The Union for the Protection of Authorship
Partners: Kostka stav
Media partners: ArtMap, jlbjlt.net, Náš REGION
and Mladý svět and UMA: You Make Art
