Eglė Ulčickaitė. CARD CATALOGUE

In this exhibition I present part of collection of project the ‘Parallel Card Catalogue‘. This art project explores the means of perceiving time and temporality as well as works of memory. I aim comprehending where the state of experiencing parallel times comes from.

I explore manifestations of everyday life: things, interiors, spots, and locations – common-places that humans establish, reconstruct, and abandon. In particular, I focus on that part of surrounding environment that loses its utilitarian purpose. I seek capturing time in painting through difference in meaning of a thing and its function.

The German word karte [map], Italian carta [card], Latin charta [paper], plus theke [container, box] in Greek all refer to the systemic collection of index cards – card catalogue or cartothèque in French. In my project, I substitute these index cards with paintings. I consider them being peculiar containers of time(s) – as if I catch past time in painting at present. I reflect upon present experience of things that belong to the domain of the past, but not to my autobiographical memory. When painting, I create place-and-time-specific facts. It might seem as if I am collecting painted artefacts. However, what impels me is not (merely) aesthetic curiosity. Instead, I attempt to figure out, where an obsession with collecting unfamiliar things that reside in the past derives from; why is there a need to turn one’s gaze backwards, and, most importantly, what sort of gaze is that, what its nature is.

Painting herein is a medium with the help of which I transform what is unfamiliar into familiar. My creative method is borrowing. I imagine that this is the way to compensate for the lack of clear apprehension of what the lived present is. For it might be that what I do not remember is not mine. However, that does not necessarily mean that it is not part of me.

-Eglė Ulčickaitė, 2019