Charcoal City // Arthur Laidlaw + Česlovas Lukenskas
Charcoal City
A joint exhibition, featuring works by Arthur Laidlaw and Česlovas Lukenskas.
It addresses issues concerning the continued significance of spiritual identity and the latent power that physical icons, symbols and architecture hold over us in the present day.
Press Release
Much is written on the irrelevance of religion in modern times, yet an elemental condition of humanity—a certain ‘religious impulse’—is persistently robust. The vast unknown looms just beyond our perception, forcing us to confront the void of nothingness. Our age is one of faith in science, yet there are still matters beyond the purview of empirical observation. Indeed, religion will remain for as long as there are unanswerable questions.
One can forget how extraordinary it is that half nearly half of humanity, or at least their recent ancestors, regards faith as stemming from messianic monotheist religions of the book and that these books are all over a thousand years old. Religion, seen in this light, becomes a binding agent.
That, for so many, the theological contours of the world derive from the same source gives lie to the notion, currently popular in our age of ‘religious’ war, that faith only serves to divide. Whether you believe in god or not, the acknowledgement that we are all the same before god or nature or death, is a powerful realisation and an agent of transcendence and universality.
Religion also serves to join humanity with its past. In this post-industrialist age, the span of a few generations can seem like a difference of centuries. The ceremonies, texts, artefacts and architecture of a religious tradition can be a final link between us and our long-distant ancestors.
Artists
Arthur Laidlaw b.1989 British, based in Berlin
Laidlaw completed my BA in History of Art at the University of Oxford in 2013, and his MA in Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2015 and has exhibited internationally over the past decade in London, Oxford, Berlin, Leipzig. As well as his practice Laidlaw is also leads the curatorial team at Else of Elsewhere in Berlin. In 2016 he was awarded the young artist award by the Oxford Art Society, his works are collected internationally by private collectors.
Česlovas Lukenskas b. 1959. Lithuania, based in Kaunas
Lukenskas one of the most prominent pioneers of contemporary interdisciplinary art in Lithuania, the founder of the POST ARS group. His works have been exhibited in the Lithuanian Museum of Art, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, MO Museum.
Commercial galleries in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Abtei Liesborn museum (Germany), London (UK), Brixen (Italy), Paris, Nimes (France), Espaco IMERGE (Porto, Portugal), Copenhagen (Denmark). He have participated in group exhibitions in Kiev (Ukraine), Pereslavl-Zaleski (Russia), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Warsaw (Poland), Tampere Hall (Finland), Bekesaba and Budapest (Hungary), Chicago (USA) and elsewhere. Among moany private collectors internationally.
Together with a group of artists from POST ARS, he has been awarded the Grand Prix for Post-Industrial Landscape regeneration project “Score” at Europa Biennale Niederlausitz II (Germany). In 2009 he was selected as the most memorable artist in Kaunas.
In this exhibition is his series known as CREMATES. Each Cremate is unique and individually carved from burned charcoal.