Liudvikas Kesminas + VAA Gallery Artifex Presents Full Metal Shell DLC, Vilnius

Something in the logic of pop culture has always been borrowed from metallurgy. An image rises, hardens, begins to reflect and then, almost without announcement, starts to rust.

Liudvikas Kesminas positions pop culture icons not as subjects of celebration but as specimens caught mid-expiration — still recognisable, already changing

Liudvikas Kesminas treats this process not as critique but as condition: the subjects of his sculptures are icons drawn from gaming culture and the digital imaginary Hatsune Miku, the worn silhouette of Lana Del Rey rendered in iron and metal, materials whose promise of permanence is immediately undone by oxidation and time.

The exhibition Full Metal Shell DLC at VAA gallery Artifex in Vilnius extends what the artist calls his creative container: a downloadable layer added to an existing world, a supplement in which personal mythology and digital culture begin to bleed into one another.

These static, non-kinetic objects hold a frozen second of pop-cultural stagnation not as mourning, but as a form of structural observation. The materials carry their own expiration date.

Curatorial Text by Pavel Pavel

The weight of a Papilio machaon butterfly is approximately 0.3–0.4 gr. I know some people who heard the cries of gargoyles — they lost the ability to speak. There were also those who heard their laughter — they went mad.

Never look them in the eye. He continued his experiments — iron remained iron. At some point the alchemist realised that it was not the properties of metals that were changing, but he himself. And he cannot remember what he was like at the beginning of his journey. We have never seen these creatures but every night we await their arrival. Our craftsmen made them out of metal; they are entirely the product of our imagination and dreams and there is no certainty that they are really like that. We store them in a large hangar and their number is increasing because we dream every night.

We call this place the Shelter and when the sandstorm begins, we hide there too. The neighbourhood of monsters does not frighten us. At night we sometimes look at the stars; we like to look at Mars. We have heard that this planet is somehow connected with war, which seems strange to us. We bury our dead in orange clothes and imagine that Mars is their final resting place. The tanks of the First World War were frightening and monstrous but invisible poisonous substances were much more effective.

I asked the craftsman to make me out of clay but he chose metal and now when I move every joint the metal plates cause me excruciating pain. These metal spikes are on my cheek, located closer to my ear. I woke up and they were already there, so they must have appeared during the night. Hiding them under plaster won't work, so I'll order some food and work from home or catch up on my new comics, which I never seem to have enough time for. I wonder how Lana Del Rey's songs would sound played on a polyphone? The heaviest metal on Earth is osmium.

About the Artist

Liudvikas Kesminas (*1997) is a member of the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists' Union. His practice spans spatial installation, sculpture, drawing, and the strategic adaptation of found objects. Full Metal Shell DLC was funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture. Photography: Jonas Balsevičius.

↗ Artist Instagram [📍 VAA gallery Artifex, Vilnius]

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