Saulius Vaitiekūnas (b. 1953, Lithuania)
Ex voto / Raudų siena, 2016

Terra Recognita, Vilnius, Lithuania / Visited 02/02/2020

While studying jewellery, I was always struggling with perceived scale limitations. Wearability is an interesting quality, but I’ve been always attracted to large scale works. Even when I’ve shelved my active engagement with jewellery, I kept struggling with space restrictions of the studio that I wanted to overcome, eventually settling for conceptual explorations of scale.

Thus when I happened to come across Vaitiekūnas oeuvre full of seamless transitions between jewellery and monumental sculpture and/or installation, I was full of awe – and inspiration. Apart from resolving the problem of scale for me, his works also enchanted me with their poetic and thought provoking underlying concepts as well as interesting material choices, in particular utilising simplest everyday stones together with precious metals.

The work in the image, “The Wailing Wall”, measures 2.65m x 7m and weighs 3 tons. Apart from the block wall it consists of hundreds of symbolic “cuckoo clocks” – each a complete piece of jewellery or a small object, together making up this monumental installation. It invites to consider implications of massive contemporary emigration from Lithuania – clocks alluding to the ticking time of those individual lives spent abroad, while also referring to cuckoos’ habit of laying eggs in other birds’ nests.

The most direct relevance for my practice is in this seamless transition from series of small stand-alone units into a monumental work while keeping the concept intact. Perhaps I am more likely to employ it in my photographic series, paintings or sound, but return to jewellery-sculpture cannot be out-ruled either.