NYAB Event - Jonas Mekas "New Work"

Jonas Mekas "New Work"

Stendhal Gallery

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Maya Stendhal Gallery presents Jonas Mekas: New Work. The exhibition will present the world premiere of Jonas Mekas’ latest 4-monitor video installation entitled Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR (2008). Also on view for the first time will be three new works from the artist’s dynamic collection of 40 film stills series.

Forces of time, memory, change, and human will collide in Mekas’ compelling work Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR (2008). The work’s title refers to the historical time when the world watched as Mekas’ home country of Lithuania fought for independence from the stronghold of Soviet rule. Comprised of 4 parts with a total running time of 4 hours and 46 minutes, it will be presented in a 4-monitor video installation format offering a chronological overview of Lithuania’s birth as an independent nation. With a video camera, Mekas recorded newscasts that played daily in 1991 on his television set at home. Footage includes reports of the Soviet Union’s use of “aggressive actions” that called for Lithuanian back down, freedom demonstrations, interviews and statements made by top politicians, journalists, and analysts that include Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis, Deputy Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene, Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, United States President George H.W. Bush among others, as well as moving portraits of the Lithuanian people who were directly affected by the conflict. Mekas’ account, reported by news outlets in the United States, also reveals the shaping and shifting of political, economic, and social relations between the Eastern Europe and the West at the time.