Takeover: #134 Vytautas Kumža
Vytautas Kumža: Instagram / Website
#134 (19/10 - 25/10 2020) written by Anisa Demirci and Cheyenne Pattiwaël
Vytautas Kumža graduated from The Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Photography, in 2017. Before that, he studied Applied Photography at Vilnius College of Design, Lithuania. It is safe to say that Vytautas has an untamable passion for the medium of photography.
His art explores the medium itself and its limitations. Throughout this research, Vytautas is endeavoring to stretch the perception, presentation and usage of photography, in order to create a broader range within the discipline.
“I want to explore and add to the field and community of photography.”
Theatre decorations, sculpture, performance, window displays and different gestures on photography inspire him. Eye trickery and illusionary presentations in the everyday world are important source of inspiration and recurring phenomena in his work. Vytautas uses this to make the viewer understand his language and intention. By constructedpleasing imagery, the viewer is enticed to spend more time with the work and notice small gestures, human hand errors and raise some questions.
Vytautas sees the medium of photography as a starting point he is reconsidering, developing and broadening. It becomes more linear, gradually exploring it further and further, and expanding it into more physical space. His photography work integrates sculptural elements or becomes an installation itself. He wants us to not only look at a photograph as an image, but also as an object. His intention is to create a space that facilitates the viewer to get lost in what they see.
“My works have a certain logic to them, they orchestrate each other. There’s repetition, a timeline and a thread connecting all of them.”
He often works with fantastic logic; transforming the everyday banality, twisting and twirling it, like poetry in order to elevate it to the status of an oddity. He’s dismantling and reconstructing the idea of the object and our view on it, pushing the potential of the space or object to the limit. Vytautas experiments with presentation and placement of a photographs in the space, creating an experience for the audience.
“For me it's important to make the viewer question the imagery, not always believing what you see. We are surrounded by images and therefore not filtering them anymore. This has become a tool to question our believes in what we see.”
“I see my visual language that I use as a form of communication. I want to have and create this dialogue with the viewer and make aware of what he sees.”
His art explores the medium itself and its limitations. Throughout this research, Vytautas is endeavoring to stretch the perception, presentation and usage of photography, in order to create a broader range within the discipline.
“I want to explore and add to the field and community of photography.”
Theatre decorations, sculpture, performance, window displays and different gestures on photography inspire him. Eye trickery and illusionary presentations in the everyday world are important source of inspiration and recurring phenomena in his work. Vytautas uses this to make the viewer understand his language and intention. By constructedpleasing imagery, the viewer is enticed to spend more time with the work and notice small gestures, human hand errors and raise some questions.
Vytautas sees the medium of photography as a starting point he is reconsidering, developing and broadening. It becomes more linear, gradually exploring it further and further, and expanding it into more physical space. His photography work integrates sculptural elements or becomes an installation itself. He wants us to not only look at a photograph as an image, but also as an object. His intention is to create a space that facilitates the viewer to get lost in what they see.
“My works have a certain logic to them, they orchestrate each other. There’s repetition, a timeline and a thread connecting all of them.”
He often works with fantastic logic; transforming the everyday banality, twisting and twirling it, like poetry in order to elevate it to the status of an oddity. He’s dismantling and reconstructing the idea of the object and our view on it, pushing the potential of the space or object to the limit. Vytautas experiments with presentation and placement of a photographs in the space, creating an experience for the audience.
“For me it's important to make the viewer question the imagery, not always believing what you see. We are surrounded by images and therefore not filtering them anymore. This has become a tool to question our believes in what we see.”
“I see my visual language that I use as a form of communication. I want to have and create this dialogue with the viewer and make aware of what he sees.”