Focus
Frieze New York
5 - 7 May 2017
New York, NY, USA
Parafin will present London-based Lithuanian artist Indrė Šerpytytė in the Focus section of Frieze New York showing works from the recent Pedestal series alongside the related audio work Toppled. Pedestal addresses a gulf between past and present by contrasting archival images of statues of Lenin and Stalin, once sited in grand public spaces in Lithuania, with their current existence in Lithuania’s Grūtas Park, a kitsch ‘nostalgia’ theme park. While elements of the composite images are congruent, suggesting continuity, there is a sharp contrast between the black and white archival photographs and the richly coloured contemporary images. For Toppled the artist employed a professional narrator specialising in film and television descriptions for the blind to interpret footage compiled by the artist of the dismantling of the kind of public monuments depicted in Pedestal after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The audio descriptions, presented without emotional inflection, often focus on unexpected or surreal details and provide an arresting counterpoint to the images of the statues.