The artist Augustas Serapinas reimagines and restages socially engaged spaces, throwing into question the assumptions that shape them. The performance Jõusaal (gym) restages a work initially conceived in residence at the Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Estonia. During this time, the artist came across abandoned sculptures, relinquished and left behind by Fine Arts students. Reflecting on the Academy’s isolation from its surrounding environment – including athletic training sites used in preparation for the 2012 Olympics – Serapinas revitalised the discarded works by constructing a gym within the Academy’s parameters. At Frieze Live, Serapinas’ gym is once again brought to life. Local Londoners are invited to make use of Jõusaal as they would their regular gyms. All equipment utilised here has been recreated from memory and interrogates the possibility of applying novel functions to the notion of the artwork previously made redundant.
Augustas Serapinas was born in 1990. The artist lives and works in Vilnius. Serapinas attended the Rupert Educational Program in Vilnius, LT (2014) and completed a BA Fine Arts from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius, LT (2013) and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, DK (2013). Recent exhibitions include ‘Dusting the Grounds’, David Roberts Art Foundation (London, UK – 2016); ‘Philip, Lukas & Isidora’, SALTS (Basel, CH – 2015); ‘Double Bind’, Rupert (Vilnius, LT – 2015); 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, (Moscow, RU – 2015) and ‘The Future of Memory. An Exhibition on the Infinity of the Present Time’, Kunsthalle Wien, (Vienna, AU – 2015).
Augustas Serapinas: Jõusaal (gym) (Emalin Gallery, London) at Frieze London 2016 Live. Performance, October 15, 2016.
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