Adresas: Konstitucijos pr. 22, LT–08105, Vilnius. Tel.  +370 5 212 2997, + 370 5  212 888, faksas +370 5 2122888, el. paštas info[at]ndg.lt. Svetainė internete – http://www.ndg.lt   EXHIBITION OF STASYS EIDRIGEVIČIUS "A FACE ON THE MASK" 8 April – 4 June, 2011   Stasys Eidrigevičius. Hare. 1988. Paper, Crayon. A face on a mask is one of the recurring themes in the work of Stasys Eidrigevičius, which sheds a light on his idiosyncratic mindset and his perspective on the surrounding reality. Eidrigevičius rejects the traditional interpretation of the mask as an object that one can conveniently put on one’s face in order to become someone else, someone that one is not. He is concerned with the paradoxical purpose of a face on a mask: to breathe life into a lifeless being, to give a voice to the mute one. The protagonist of his works, who wears a mask with a face on it, at first sight resembles a puppet: his face appears emotionless and lifeless, the movements of his body are static and passive, the silhouette is highlighted by a simple “wooden” contour, while the structure of the body resembles an empty shell. The sad eyes, which are round like buttons, are one of the masked creature’s most expressive features. Yet the works prompt us to ask: why does the artist choose to portray puppet faces like masks? Why does he ignore real human faces? Do human faces say too little? The answers lie in the very origins of this particular concept of the character portrayed. One of these is peasant culture; the scale and the nature of its influence is best described by the metaphor of peasant hallucinatory power, which was devised with reference to the work of the Belgian painter Constant Permeke. This power manifests itself as the irrational arrangement of elements of reality, strange associations, and dreamlike scenes that make the viewer feel uneasy. Eidrigevičius has long been interested in things that cover voids or spaces, which recur not only as a mist, but also in more concrete forms, such as fences, nets, paper or clothes. The void concealed by a certain surface or mask can be associated with states such as melancholy, nostalgia, or an ambiguous mood that is characteristic of nature. This void, however, penetrates through the shell, animating the mask, and imparts to it a certain psychological depth. The character that is created by the artist seems to have put a mask on his face because he was shaken by the world, by its poverty, by its disasters, and so on, and yet he is all eyes as he looks at the world through this mask, which suddenly becomes alive. Eidrigevičius is seen primarily as an artist who is concerned with the fantastic, and as an illustrator. The concept of a face on a mask, however, shows him to be a storyteller and a visionary artist, observing and exploring the world, and this reveals a new aspect to his work.   The exhibition comprises three sections: “Misty”, “Melancholy and Nostalgia”, and “(Im)mortal”, which correspond with moods or states that dominate work by Eidrigevičius from 1974 to 2010. Curator Milda Žvirblytė