North East Wind 1–12

North East Wind 1–12 Installation 2018–2023 Cyanotypes, vatman paper, photo-documentation, 12 unique works, 144 × 89 cm Archive storage furniture: timber, metal. 160 × 144 × 100 cm North East Wind is a long-term work that brings together drawing, photography, writing, and the recording of time. The work is inspired by personal upheavals and reflections, interpreted as conceptual processes that led the artist toward an abstract yet precise visual expression. Gintautas Trimakas: While preparing the work for presentation, I enlarge lines from my book, whose pages had been marked with ink in advance, becoming both the original and a rough copy. I chose the surface size according to the Fibonacci sequence: 89 × 144 cm. One plane holds 49 pages from my book. Since the book has 560 pages, I calculated that I needed 12 planes. This was a writing with light, produced during the exhibition. Each morning before opening, I came to the exhibition space, filled my fountain pen with a light-sensitive liquid used in the cyanotype process, and drew lines from left to right across the page-sized surface: 7 lines by 7 columns. Each plane uses 8 millilitres of liquid. When the exhibition opened, I uncovered the surface, allowing it to begin receiving light. At the end of the day, I stopped the exposure by washing the plane. In this way, I obtained 49 pages, each with a different shade of blue. (The project began as the solo exhibition Reply at Vartai Gallery, Vilnius, in 2018. Each subsequent exhibition became an opportunity to continue the presentation, as the exhibition itself is located in the artist’s workshop.)