Remigijus Treigys

Remigijus Treigys' photography series A City from Memory. Vilnius

The artist Remigijus Treigys, who lives and works in Klaipėda, presented his first solo exhibition, in which he laid the foundation for his idiosyncratic expressive manner that he continues to work in to this day, at the Vilnius Art Exhibition Palace in 1989. His individual works and series reflect the artist's individuality and his remarkably subtle and intellectual perspective on reality. Having distanced himself from traditional photography, based on the documentary paradigm, Treigys turns to aesthetic experience. He observes and depicts common everyday objects, yet he transfers to the photographic plane only his inner "seeing", experienced and revisited in deep contemplation.

Due to the complex and precise nature of the creative process, the author' archive is not particularly vast - normally a work comes in merely two or three copies. The artist himself describes the production of a print in the following way: "That splashing in developing trays, when I develop a photograph without using any pincers, and instead soak my hands into the chemicals. I rub the emulsion and the developer in with my hand. It resembles shamanism. It must be done by hand. One must have a contact with the paper itself". The spiritual dimensions, subtly expressed in the photograph, and the conception of the world manifested in the finished work distinguish the artist from other artists of his generations: Treigys' photographs are recognisable not because of their surface informational content, but because of his unique aesthetic stroke. Treigys has created impressive and memorable series: 21 Days in Berlin (2001), Last Day in Venice (2004). The creative project 21 Days in Berlin was met with particular acclaim by the Lithuanian and German photographers' communities. Having received a Robert Bosch Foundation Felloship in 2004, the artist spent 21 days in Berlin, where he created a series of photographs. The latter was later exhibited in Lithuania, Germany, Finland, and Poland. In 2008 Treigys published a photo-essayistic album titled Berlinalias, a collaboration with the writer Rolandas Rastauskas, which won the awards of the Klaipėda Book, Book Art, and Baltic Book Art competitions. Yet the most important thing is that Treigys remained true to his own vision in the series dedicated to Berlin and other European cities - without overemphasising the "task", the author expressed the exploration of the cities through abstracted imagery unique to his oeuvre.

Compiled by Margarita Matulytė