Art Vilnius 2019

The international contemporary art fair Art Vilnius is the biggest art fair in the Eastern European region, which is celebrating its one-decade anniversary. Art Vilnius ’19, the tenth iteration of the fair, will take place between May 30 and June 2 at the LITEXPO exhibition and congress center.

The fair is visited by 23,000 people annually. ArtVilnius is focus on contemporary emerging and established young artists and galleries. Art Vilnius ‘19 is featuring 66 galleries and showcasing 300 artists from 20 countries. The art fair will host leading galleries from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine. In addition, art fair visitors will have the opportunity to see Danish, Italian, German, Austrian and Belarusian galleries. Several displays will offer works by the underground film legend, Jonas Mekas (1922–2019), who was born in Lithuania.

ArtVilnius celebrates its 10th edition anniversary with a #FocusFrance programme represented by 11 galleries selected by Aurélie Faure. Dedicated to emerging artists, the programme will offer a high-quality panel of the French scene.

The French curator offers this opportunity to promote a new generation of galleries as Galerie Valeria Cetraro which inaugurates a new space in Le Marais and will present a focus on Pierre Clément’s works to dialogue margins of society with mainstream culture; Galerie Eric Mouchet will display works by young French multi-disciplinary artists such as Louis-Cyprien Rials (SAM Prize – Palais de Tokyo) or Pierre Gaignard besides historical drawings by Le Corbusier or Robert Michel and his wife Ella Bergmann; the gallery 22,48m2 will present paintings, sculptures, and videos, including works by Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion.

This focus also welcomes established French galleries, such as Galerie Thomas Bernard with works, among others, by the famous multidisciplinary artist and musician, Rainer Lericolais, collected by such prestigious private and public collections as Centre Pompidou (Paris); Galerie Ceysson-Benetière which is known for representing the historic French movement Supports/Surfaces and is promoting talented and awarded emergent artists who explore limits of media, such as Adrien Vescovi, photograph-sculptures by Aurelie Petrel, and sculpted-photographs on concrete by duo Florian Pugnaire & David Raffini; Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve will mix Germans and French whom she represents for some time, such  as international photographers Jurgen Teller and Boris Mikhailov, and French emergent artists Romain Bernini and Eva Jospin (fellows at the Academy of France in Rome, in the Villa Medici); Galerie Eva Hober will do a special project with three French female painters to get the best combination of violence, romanticism and humour.

New in the Parisian art gallery landscape, Hors-Cadre and Bubenberg are two digital and nomadic art galleries based in Paris which challenge the traditional gallery model, both organizing temporary exhibitions in France or aboard to give visibility of the French Scene. Two French galleries Galerie Nivet-Carzon and Galerie des Petits-Carreaux have been participating in ArtVilnius for few years and they are returning to ArtVilnius again.

The #FocusFrance will be complemented by a programme curated by Aurélie Faure with the exhibition project On the Edge which will link paintings and videos by emergent artists to build connections in History of Art between these two practices through worldwide contemporary challenges such as economy, environment, new technologies, migrations, etc.

Lewben Art Foundation, set up by the art fair’s exclusive partner Lewben Group, is teaming up with the fair for the sixth time and presenting a selection that includes artworks by Jake & Dinos Chapman, Andres Serrano and etc. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (MOCAK) is returning to ArtVilnius with an international programme by artists Andrzej Dłużniewski, Łódź Kaliska, Azorro (Poland), Shahar Marcus (Israel) and Géza Perneczky (Hungary).

After hours, the organizers will be inviting everyone on night tours to explore the galleries and museums. The team of ArtVilnius also invites all visitors of the art fair to discover two new museums recently opened in Vilnius: MO museum and TARTLE. This is one more reason for visiting the capital of Lithuania.