The Return of the Figurative as an Opportunity to Meet the Other. Valentinas Klimašauskas in Conversation with Saskia Fischer and Rodrigo Hernández

On Thursday, August 20, at 6:30 PM, the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) invites you to a conversation between artists Rodrigo Hernández and Saskia Fischer and exhibition curator Valentinas Klimašauskas, held as part of the exhibition "Superglue, or Making a Friend". The meeting will take place in the CAC reading room. During the conversation, we will get to know the artists' creative practices and discuss the new theoretical, technological and other approaches behind the clear return of the figure that we have recently been seeing in contemporary art. Figurative art has existed for at least 50,000 years. The oldest works currently known are drawings of three human figures and a wild pig found in a cave in the Indonesian archipelago. Today's rise of figurative art can be interpreted as a reaction to the uncertainty, disinformation, speculation, simulation, hyperrealism and excess of big data that accompany the growing dominance of technology. It can also be understood as an attempt to make use of the possibilities offered by posthumanism, new materialisms, postcolonial perspectives, post-robotics, artificial intelligence and other processes. In the context of the exhibition "Superglue, or Making a Friend", we will discuss how the return of the figurative opens up new possibilities for encountering the other: different conceptions of the other, the other as a posthumanist figure, and also the notion of contemporary art itself as something ultimately unknowable, foreign. The conversation will be held in English . The event is free and open to everyone. RODRIGO HERNÁNDEZ (born in Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in Paris) Hernández's distinctive visual vocabulary invites viewers – much like fiction does – to briefly set aside skepticism and open themselves up to imagination. Each of his installations is constructed like a rebus – built from poetry, philosophy, narratives and dreams. The abundant historical and aesthetic references in Hernández's work are not an end in themselves – they become an experiment in synthesis, in which the viewer navigates as if through a cosmos of possibilities. The artist's paintings, reliefs, sculptures and installations function like machines that train the imagination, encouraging the search for connections between images and their meanings, between forms and their contexts. After completing his bachelor's studies at the Karlsruhe State Academy of Fine Arts, Hernández went on to study at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Throughout August, the artist is undertaking a creative residency at the Užupis Art Incubator in Vilnius. SASKIA FISCHER (born in Stuttgart, Germany; lives and works in Vilnius and Stuttgart) The artist works in the fields of film, sculpture, performance and interventions in public spaces. In her work she explores how identity and landscape intertwine and interact. Natural and man-made environments become, in Fischer's work, a stage, an archive and a resonating space in which individual and collective imprints are revealed. The key starting points of her practice are architecture and queer feminism, particularly the visibility of marginalized bodies and voices within built environments. Using fiction and materials such as glass and light, the artist creates sculptural scenarios and cinematic mises-en-scène in which landscape is perceived as a dynamic field of transitions and tensions. Fischer studied photography at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and glass, sculpture and installation at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. She was recently a fellow of the "Weissenhof" program at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, where she also taught in the Department of Fine Arts. VALENTINAS KLIMAŠAUSKAS is the CAC's director, a curator and a writer. Among the larger international projects he has curated are the 1st Klaipėda Biennial "Sunset Every Two Years" (2025), the Lithuanian National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art (together with João Laia; artists: Pakui Hardware and Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė, Lithuanian National Museum of Art, 2024), the "Coast Contemporary" contemporary art festival on the Lofoten Islands, Norway (2023), the 14th Baltic Triennial "The Endless Ending" (together with João Laia, CAC, Vilnius, 2021), Alexandra Pirici's choreographic project at the IXth Fort Monument to the Victims of Nazism in Kaunas (2020), and the Latvian National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (together with Inga Lāce; Daiga Grantiņa's solo exhibition "Saules Suns", 2019). Photography and/or filming may take place during the event. Please be aware that you may appear in photographs and/or video recordings from the event, which may be published on social media or other media outlets.

Adresas: Šiuolaikinio meno centras (ŠMC)

Kaina: Nemokamai