Jonas Gasiunas
Born in 1954.
1972 – 73 studied in Pedagogical Institute of Siauliai (Lithuania) Departament of Art.
78 – 84 State Art Institute (Vilnius), Department of Painting.
‘The artist exploits and conceptualizes the particularities of his materials. With the help of non-traditional tools and techniques, he conveys a sense of “dematerialized“, “rusty” or burned matter as well as vivid brutal textures.’
Gražina Marciukaitytė
About ‘The Whistle’:
‘I fill the inner void of the instrument with my invisible body matter, and I’m not sure if I’m whistling myself or only blowing out the air, while the instrument is whistling. It limits and compresses the very movement of blowing and the “wind” obeying it by turning it into sound – whistling; in a hollow container a break of silence – the birth of sound – takes place In this way the instrument becomes a makeshift mouth – a voice mask. It is this mask that embodies the fake nature of the whistling sound. By putting this configured tube to your lips and blowing into it, you experience how its alien “body” becomes your implement, a prosthesis extending the functions and surfaces of your body, through which the air inside you, your silence and smell spreads out in the form of an alien sound. This is how during the moment of sound something which is your own fuses with something alien and loses its limits.’
Tojana Račiūnaitė