Embarkation for Cythere

Leo Koenig welcomes you to the opening of the gallery space Leo Koenig, Inc. and to the fist show therein: sculptor Aidas Bareikis’ “Embarkation for Cythere,” April 10-May 9 1999. Leo Koenig, Inc. is located at 138 Bayard Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the former location of the Four Walls project-based exhibition space. The gallery will present works by emerging European and American artists for the limited time of one year. This commitment of showing is made possible through resale activities at Leo Koenig, Inc.

Aidas Bareikis’ large scale, mixed media sculpture entitled “Embarkation For Cythere” is here presented in suggestion of Antoine Watteau’s 1717 painting of the same name. The sculptor describes the work as,

“… a virtual island, It’s not a fixed place. There is possibility here. I recognized coincidence between this sculpture and Watteau’s painting. That “the party’s over” and also that there is a possibility left open that the party is coming. This mood has been present before, this mood of virtual entropy, it’s nothing new. This sculpture is an imploded landscape not so unlike the virtual landscape of the painting. There are found objects, ready-mades contemplating their own absence. They mingle among features that remind of a sponge swollen with matter that no longer flows. In the end it is a confusion of chipped gimcracks, ill assorted, obsolete-embarkation.”

Aidas Bareikis was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1967 and graduated from the Vilnius Art Academy in 1993. He came to America in the same year and completed the MFA program from Hunter College in 1997.