grazerkunstverein

(Exhibition)

Light

Elena Narbutaitė

29/03 - 01/06/2025, opening 28/03, 18:00

Light is a retrospective tracing Elena Narbutaitė’s engagement with lasers and LEDs, presenting works from 2013 to today.

Laser and LED are two distinct forms of light, each with their own rhythm and resonance. A laser’s beam is a sharpened line, its waves perfectly in phase – a coherence that gives it the power to cut, measure and guide. The LED, by contrast, is an unfolding glow, its photons out of step, its wavelengths blending into a spectrum that shifts and scatters. One involves focused precision, the other a dispersed field of color. Both are familiar from situations as diverse as the vibrant pulse of a party, the lethal targeting of warfare, the beam that holds an electronic door ajar, or the silent transfer of data. Narbutaitė reconfigures these ubiquitous associations, reimagining the cold accuracy of industrial lasers and the ambient shifting hues of LEDs into something unbound.

Fabricating intimacy and disquiet with exacting attention, Narbutaitė orchestrates moments in which light becomes an event – most visible when it collides with a surface, materializing as a cut in space or imbuing it with deep feeling. The beams do not merely illuminate; they shapeshift, slicing through the air with an intensity that unsettles as much as it mesmerizes, their degree of visibility changing as the brightness of the day dictates.

These works harness tension – between a radiance that delights and wounds, balms and beckons. Light, in Narbutaitė’s eyes, is a surgical yet seductive force, its edges menacing in their allure. It is ephemeral while absolute, a trace that vanishes as quickly as it appears, dissolving into the very space it momentarily inhabits. Her works do not just move through space; they press into it like a lingering resonance, an imprint of something felt and fleeting; they create a choreography of perception, inviting one to step into an architecture made of nothing but light.

Light is a meditation on its own double binds – how it dazzles and guides, divides and connects. To discern is to see and not see at the same time – to be blinded by clarity, to lose oneself in the sharp edge of illumination. It overwhelms even as it reveals, a paradox of vision and obscurity. In bending light, Narbutaitė gives structure to such feelings.

ELENA NARBUTAITĖ (b. 1984) lives and works in Vilnius. She has participated in exhibitions internationally, including the joint Lithuanian and Cyprus pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) and the Liverpool Biennial (2016). Recent exhibitions include  2019, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2024); 15th Baltic Triennial: Same Day, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2024); Unknown Familiars, Leopold Museum, Vienna (2024); Mars Returns, Mykolas Žilinskas Gallery, Kaunas (2022); Nashashibi/Skaer: Thinking Through Other Artists, Tate St Ives (2018); Rehearsal, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2018); and Dools, Carré d’Art Nîmes (2018). She is an associate editor for BILL, an annual magazine of photographic stories initiated by Julie Peeters.

01Elena Narbutaitė, Image for an exhibition, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.