Skinny Dip

Viltė Bražiūnaitė and Tomas Sinkevičius, an artist duo that has been collaborating since 2014, opens the autumn season of Studio17 with a solo exhibition titled Skinny Dip. The artistic practice of the duo explores repercussions of automation in the age of late capitalism.

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Skinny Dip

My hand moves along the fender, cleaning every spot, the suds froth in the bucket. Lather drips on my lap and shirt. The smell of soap thickens the air. Metallic fish, with outstretched fins. Refracted light pumps heat into the car interior, chrome details shine in the sun. The brightness hurts my eyes, and when I close them, I see red. I feel the sun on my shoulders, shiny and slick with sweat. A silver necklace absorbs the warmth. A silver leak. My muscles ripple as I lift a hose to rinse a red, moist body basking in the sun. Let the watery mind run out, peel off the salty skin. The hose sprays water all over the hood, the light flickers in steel-bright tremors and trickles down, pooling on the ground into iridescent puddles. Soft white bubbles, shooting and dancing. Drops dissolve on the heated surface. The sun glitters, glitters across the surface, shimmering like a fish-scale.

The car I drift, course down the highway just to be first, watching the road being swallowed by speed.

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Tomas Sinkevičius (1991, Birštonas, Lithuania) and Viltė Bražiūnaitė (1991, Vilnius, Lithuania) have exhibited at Contemporary Art Center Vilnius, Platform Stockholm, Moscow Young Biennale 2018, xhibit Vienna, VARTAI Vilnius, and Klubovna Brno. In 2016 they were shortlisted for the JCDecaux award and in 2018 they were awarded the Birgit Jürgenssen Price. Later this year, the artist duo will present a solo project at Editorial Vilnius and participate in a group exhibition at Kunsthalle Vienna.

The exhibition has been supported by Nordic Culture Point and the Lithuanian Culture Board.

The artists and Studio17 would like to thank: Rogaland Kunstsenter, KiGO, the Lithuanian Rogland Community, Florence Wild, Naomi Langan, Carl-Oskar Linné, and Anna Ihle.