On 14 February 2025, internationally acclaimed Lithuanian artist Augustas Serapinas will open his solo exhibition, Čiurlionis Gym, in the Great Hall of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius. This marks the largest and most ambitious presentation of the artist’s work in Lithuania to date.
Serapinas transforms the hall into a functioning gym, where various equipment encircles a running track. The space will host sports training sessions, while students from the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art and other art schools will use it to practice their drawing and painting skills. Special performances activating the installation will take place during the opening and closing events, as well as several times throughout the exhibition.
The installation is inspired by Serapinas’ experience as a student at the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art in Vilnius, where art education follows a classical methodology emphasising life drawing, and perfecting the techniques of painting, sculpture, and graphic art. Returning to the school’s archives, Serapinas recreates copies of his student work and plaster models, later using them to construct a fully operational gym. The piece links the copying-based artistic education to working out in a gym, as both rely on repetitive actions and long, hard work.
AUGUSTAS SERAPINAS (b. 1990, Vilnius) tells stories of places, people and site specific memories in his installations. By removing the usual properties of specific spaces and objects and attributing new characteristics to them, Serapinas changes our previous perceptions. Through these spatial shifts, he rethinks (in-between) space as a public place and makes visible the institutional, hierarchical or even economic functions resulting from architectural conditions. In many of his works he engages with his country of origin and illuminates facets of Lithuania’s geography, history and culture in subtle and humorous ways. Serapinas’ artistic work is characterized by a spontaneous and above all intense engagement with his immediate surroundings. He often works with people from the neighbourhood and actively involves them in the process of creating his work.
Augustas Serapinas graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2013. His work has been part of numerous biennials, including the 57th Biennale di Venezia, Riboca2 and Toronto Biennial of Art. His work is represented in renowned public collections such as the Tate, Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Pinakothek der Moderne and M HKA. Recent solo shows include FOROF Roma, Galeria Arsenal Bialystok and ICA Milano.
Title image: Augustas Serapinas Čiurlionis Gym, 2023, installation view Art Basel Unlimited,
Courtesy of artist and Galerie Tschudi in collaboration with Apalazzo Gallery
Photo: Nicolas Gysin