Linas Kaziulionis

On Friday, June 26, at 6:00 PM, the LDS gallery "Arka" invites you to the opening of Linas Kaziulionis's painting exhibition "The Game of Agreements." The event will include a presentation and a tour of three new exhibitions opening at the gallery.

For several years, Linas Kaziulionis has been investigating the logic of disinformation and conspiracy theories – how they emerge, why they spread, and why we believe in them. His previous works were created around a fictitious chemical that allegedly affects human thinking through food, making us easier to control. The new series analyzes the rituals of games – the places and ways where people relax while simultaneously making important decisions.

"The Game of Agreements" is a series of paintings about a game – golf – as a space of power. This activity is slow, disciplined, and requires concentration. Formally, nothing happens in it – a ball, a few swings, grass. Precisely for this reason, it has become an ideal place for conversations that not everyone is meant to hear. Deals, alliances, informal agreements between those whose friendships in the world cost more than private jets. The game is both an instrument of power and a rest from it. In both cases, it is a human need for which there is no substitute. In his book Homo Ludens (1938), Johan Huizinga argued that play is the primary source of culture: preceding art or religion. Ritualized games – from the Olympics to card games – have always been not only entertainment but also a way to make decisions without formal protocol and to draw hierarchies without public declarations. Golf, particularly popular among all US presidents, has been an undeniable scenography for planning new world orders. A sad irony – you play and talk about new military actions as if it were a game.

L. Kaziulionis plays golf himself – and this is important to know when looking at his works. He is not an ironic observer from the sidelines. The artist knows perfectly well how to navigate a golf bag or between holes – he rests where others discuss new alliances or billion-dollar deals. In the exhibition, the painter invites viewers into a stage-like space – to feel the grass under their feet, to count the mystical eighteen balls, and to meet themselves as a player in the reflections of mirrors. Golf perfectly reminds us that there is no point in competing with others; the only path to success is through concentration on one's own hole – the goal.

L. Kaziulionis's painting golf is a space of power – it is both an incubator of disinformation and a territory of peace where a tired person of this world can stop, recharge, and play again. It is not a contradictory place, but a reality where everything happens at once. In the "Game of Agreements" painting cycle, L. Kaziulionis raises his favorite questions: who is really controlling the world's game and do we even know that we are participating in it?