On 29 January, Mykolas Sauka’s exhibition opens at apiece, a gallery strategically focused on autonomous artistic expression.
For the past five years, Sauka’s creative focus and material of choice has been wood. “For me, wood evokes naivety, sanctity, cosiness, and Lithuanian baroque. It shapes the themes, and from them, day by day, an organised whole emerges,” says the artist. Using the exhibition space as a situational framework, the sculptor continually integrates new objects with earlier works, often reworking or adapting existing pieces until a cohesive composition of sculptural forms takes shape. He skilfully balances the scale of his works, drawing viewers into a multilayered visual world that stirs conflicting emotions: cosiness and chaos, security and unease, familiarity and an atmosphere of irony.
The exhibition at the apiece gallery reflects a contemporary society fixated on the cult of the idealised body. The pursuit of external beauty, perfection, and eternal youth reveal a state of inner conflict and discomfort with the naturally ageing body. The artist approaches wood as a metaphor for the body, treating it with the precision of a plastic surgeon—though his concern lies not with the beauty standards crafted by social media, advertisements, or films, but with their antithesis. As he explains, “I drive in pegs, glue things together, leave surfaces unpolished, and it shows.” The desire to depict imperfect bodies—or, in this case, body parts—is a gesture that empowers the artwork itself. Moreover, as the artist notes, “The sculpture becomes deformed due to my flawed anatomical knowledge and lack of skill. In other words, due to my naivety.”
The organised whole of body parts—hands, arms, feet, legs, torsos, and the body bacteria invisible to the naked eye, such as Demodex folliculorum—awakens imagination and curiosity in the context of the showcase-style gallery. Like a cabinet of curiosities filled with exotic artefacts (a kunstkabinett), it encourages us to “turn back” to none other than ourselves.
Mykolas Sauka (b. 1989) is a sculptor and writer. He completed his Master’s in Sculpture at the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2014, and his work explores the identity of the contemporary human. In 2016, at the exhibition I Feel Watched by Another, he presented three-metre-high concrete sculptures realistically depicting naked elderly people. In 2023, he held a solo exhibition Children’s Room at the Vilnius Academy of Arts Exhibition Hall Titanikas, and in 2024, a show of the same name at Galerie Olivier Waltman in Paris, as part of the Lithuanian Season ’24 programme.
He was awarded the Kazimieras Barėnas Literary Prize in 2016 for his collection of short stories Grubiai (Roughly), and in 2024, he published his second book, Kambarys (A Room). He lives and works in Vilnius.
Exhibition curators: Milena Černiakaitė and Aušra Trakšelytė
Graphic design Marek Voida
Translation Martynas Galkus
Exhibition partly funded by Lithuanian Council for Culture
Exhibition open until 4 March 2025
More about the gallery apiece.lt