Robertas Narkus Brings 'The Board' to Milan's eastcontemporary

Lithuanian artist Robertas Narkus, who represented Lithuania at the 59th Venice Biennale, presents his solo exhibition 'The Board' at eastcontemporary gallery in Milan. The show features life-size photographs and scattered objects that occupy the entire space, exploring the relationship between technology and human desire. Narkus, born in 1983 and based in Vilnius, uses performance, new media, language, humor, and an entrepreneurial spirit to blur the ordinary and absurd. Curator Neringa Bumbliené, who curated the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, contributed a text describing the work as a game with references to recent art history, object-oriented ontology fragments, and post-Covid societal challenges. The exhibition includes still-life-like images made from threads, ropes, construction materials, and remnants of works from the artist's studio and gallery, evoking a reverse Land Art from universal to local. Narkus returns to industrial photography, with Bumbliené noting that the assemblages, lit by a constant bright light, resemble living creatures or members of a clandestine committee deciding our fate in an endless videoconference. The work carries a bittersweet undertone, reflecting a contemporary society stripped of personality and identity due to social media and the pandemic. The exhibition runs at eastcontemporary in Milan.