Svajonė and Paulius Stanikas

They live and work in Vilnius and Paris.
They were chosen to represent Lithuania at the 50^th^ Venice Biennale (2003).

"Large scale photographs, giant graphite lead drawings, terra cota sculptures that look like bronze or marble, video works -- Svajone and Paulius Stanikas are difficult to pin down. And contrary to so many contemporary artists who dabble in every media as a trademark, they look for the very specificities of each medium.

Beyond the apparent eclectism of their production, the internal logic of their objects in the various fields in which they foray gets worked out in the very troubling evidence of a mental universe in which sculpture, drawing and photography, each in their own way, simply work together to convey a unique vision. Very few contemporary works display the same freedom in conception -- a freedom with respect to fashions, to trendy esthetics, to consumerism, to any other kind of 'correctness'. Very few contemporary works look like nothing else, in a time when singularities are perceived as aberrations.

The reason why I like their work so much is that it isn't patterned after a model, that it follows an inner necessity, that it doesn't make concessions, and that its ultimate concern is to interrogate, however painfully, the human condition. And in the end, that it resists commentary and remains itself: a radical questioning of contemporary human nature, produced with an incredibly ascertained sense of proportion, scale, wonderment and mystery."

Christian Caujolle