About the mysterious π – the language of art

“Incredible”, “How beautiful and delicate”, “How much patience does that artist have” – ​​these and similar assessments could be heard at the opening of a truly impressive and significantly broadening understanding of art exhibition with the enigmatic name “Blank Pages π” in the Beatrice Kleizaitė-Vasaris art gallery. And that mysterious π (Pi) is an irrational number whose approximate value is 3.1427. This number is a constant, an unchanging quantity that is widely used in many geometric formulas. At the same time, it is also a mystical number, the end of the sequence of which has not been determined to this day.

Art critic Rasa Žukienė, who introduced the artist, drew attention to the fact that there are very few creators working with leather in Lithuania. And in earlier, Soviet times, they were not trained in our country, only one other got into the Tallinn Art Institute, where he could study leatherwork. The author of the new exhibition, Leonora Kuisienė, combined both leatherwork and bookmaking in her work, and the latter has deep traditions in Lithuania since the 19th century.

And what does Pi have in common with this exhibition? L. Kuisienė, the petite, velvety-voiced, smiling and radiating author of the exhibition, explained that the continuous creative process reminds her of the mathematical infinity of a sequence of numbers, and the choice of natural leather and traditional bookbinding methods are a kind of constant. In addition, she always has a book in her sights, in the form of a book – sometimes it is a real, printed book dressed in luxurious leather, but even more often just blank pages are used.

The author presented each work of the new exhibition, explained the meaning behind it. And happy are those who heard those explanations, because without them the works and their deep meanings are not easily understood. Maybe this is not a bad thing, because then everyone will accept them as they see fit.

L. Kuisienė is also a creator of unique book-objects, the winner of the “Artist’s Book” competition in the United States of America, and the exhibits of the exhibition are inspired by works of fiction. The novel “Flaming Sword” by the theater director Vytautas Balsis from Kaunas inspired him to create a work that is so meticulous and so unusual that hardly anyone has seen anything like it.

– I was also interested in works of such a new form – balls inside which there is a text, verse, poem or cover of one or another literary work. Those balls are like spheres, and they also relate to that mysterious Pi. I create four copies of each of them – two go to the author of the literary work and two remain for me. It takes about a month to create one of them, which means that I work with one author for about four months, – said L. Kuisienė.

For her, the book is important both as a traditional medium of text and as a new work of art – an object that reveals the relationship of this artist with the creators of contemporary or classical literature.

The artist uses techniques perfected by tanners and booksellers over the course of a hundred years. Interesting and necessary materials for such works are vegetable tanned leather, wood dust plywood, synthetic silk, decorative velvet, brass, suede, aged gold paste, waxed rope and others.

Her creations are the work of thought and careful hands, the result of long-term archaic physical processes. L. Kuisienė said that she is constantly looking for new forms of expression, so she also took up the miniatures project, when 54 miniatures were created and they should be included in a separate, very unusual book in the future. The creator also discovered photography – she had the idea of ​​photographing writers holding a Rubik’s cube in their hands, as well as using the creators’ own manuscripts for their objects – let’s say they write one verse of a poem by hand, which the artist then uses for her object – a ball. It’s great that there are photos next to the works, where you can see what’s inside them, what texts are written there.

Recently, the author has been interested in the possibility of becoming a publisher herself. When she visited the recently held Book Fair in Vilnius, she didn’t buy any new books, but she received a manuscript by one writer, which she will use for a new work.
– For the past three years, in my work, there has been a constant search for ways to get out of the traditional book form, materials or binding, while not forgetting the origins of the book, when the book was a text storage medium, – says the artist about her really very interesting works, in which everyone is familiar with the form of a book turns into a book-object – a unique handmade work, a rare bibliophile publication and a collector’s dream.

This exhibition will be open until March 26, and it is definitely worth paying attention to, because it perfectly proves how unusual art forms can be and what unexpected results can be produced by the artist’s dedication and the embodiment of original, unique ideas.