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Aidas Barerikis is one of those Lithuanian artists who have known personally and was friends with legendary filmmaker and poet, one of avangarde film pioneers Jonas Mekas. Both have had affiliations with Biržai (A. Bareikis’ mother was born in the Klausučiai village near Biržai, where the artist has spent many of his childhood summers).

The artist’s show “Omeny” was represented in 2019 at the Vartai gallery in Vilnius and consists of the few smaller scale installations.

     This is how Aidas Bareikis has described the show in his own words:

“Long while ago, being a freshman at the Vilnius art school, I brought my “show” to my grandparents at the Klausučiai farm. My grandfather told me: “There will be a time when you’ll make a show at the Biržai castle…” So now is that time when I brought the show. This time from New York.”

I have chosen the word “OMENY” for the title of the show because it has OM in it and more importantly NY… Of course, the word actually means something that you have in your mind, - there could be a lot of things in your mind…

“OMENY” engages the viewer without any particular suggestion – narrative, ideological or otherwise. The main notion of the show is abstract- something or other we “have in our minds”. That something has the life of its own as if some forgotten things befallen behind the “ideological dresser” and are left to their own everyday existence.

Crude details, their unexpected relationships, their sad ecology, old things awakened to their new life, awkward documentation. They are being watched as we watch the dust circulating in front of the window of the dark room illuminated by the moonlight. They slowly settle down like the things in our minds.

Some forms of these objects remind simplified “early cubism”. For example, the piece “The Morning of the Lighter” reminds some kind of childish attempt to reach idealized cubist structure. Having something in mind, some projection of the imagination is the way to get back something which is lost, not important, fallen into the parts. Perhaps it is some sort of the special self-help of the person on his/her life’s way. My way brought me to the Biržai castle, even though there is no more old Klausučiai farmhouse, no more birch forest of my childhood, no more raspberry grove. Just somethings in my mind, “omeny”.