Trickster Magazine

Augustas Serapinas has long preferred the periphery — spatially, materially, and conceptually. While his work can be found on salvaged rooftops or floating boats, it’s just as likely to be seen in major institutional settings, from Art Basel Unlimited to the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius. Trained in classical techniques, Serapinas disassembles that legacy with deadpan wit and architectural sensitivity, frequently inviting others, be it students, trainers or passersby, to complete the circuit.

We first met in Basel in 2021, over a piece of Kalev candy. I already admired his work, and had heard the stories about the home with a hidden bunker beneath it, and the Vilnius studio you reach by winding through woods and bushes.

Following his recent exhibition Physical Culture at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, we spoke about decay, failure, and art as a form of training. The exhibition staged a full-scale gym inside the museum’s Great Hall, combining classical plaster casts with functional fitness equipment. Students from the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Arts held live drawing sessions, while personal trainers led workouts among the sculptures. We also discussed how this project later transformed — reinstalled on a wooden barge floating in the Curonian Lagoon, where it functioned as an open-air gym suspended above water.

Hello Augustas, thank you for taking the time for this interview. I’ve long admired your work. I’m not sure if you remember, but we actually met back in 2021, during Art Basel, when your Mudmen series was included in Parcours. It was at the opening at SALTS — I offered you a Kalev candy, and you dryly pointed out that it’s available in every Lithuanian Maxima.

Ohh, did I take the candy? This chocolate brand for Lithuanians is one of the most emblematic Estonian brands. It’s funny to meet an Estonian in Basel offering you Kalev candy.

What’s the last piece of news or information that genuinely fascinated you?

I recently learned of Michelangelo once making a snow sculpture. It was commissioned by Piero de’ Medici in Florence after a great snowfall. The sculpture was destined to melt and you can only guess what it was. Nevertheless it gives another perspective on patronage and the artist in renaissance times. It made me think of temporality as a very intriguing quality as it triggers our imagination.

You recently had a solo show at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius titled Physical Culture, where antique sculptures were shown alongside gym equipment and performers drawing or exercising with them. The project touches on how ideals around the body are constructed — and your own training in classical artmaking techniques. Do you think of artistic production as a kind of athletic discipline? Does practice really make perfect?

Not at all. Other than sport, the quality of art does not have a direct relation to skill or perfection. But in classical art education, which is based on copying nature, repetition and practice is essential. Does it make you a better artist if you are a skillful draftsman? – I think not. But in that kind of system you are training like an athlete. This is how I was taught as well, therefore in my exhibition at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius I invited students from the National M. K. Čiurlionis school of arts to have their drawing classes at my exhibition as well as the gym trainers to work with their clients. My show became a platform for different groups of people to occupy the space. It is about different perspectives and the point where it intersects.

I saw from your social media that Physical Culture was later re-staged on a wooden boat floating in water. And in 2023, the work was part of Art Basel Unlimited. How does shifting from an institutional white cube to a floating, almost precarious setting transform the piece?

I see it as an open-air gym in a truly spectacular setting — on a barge, floating in the open waters of the Curonian Lagoon. Set in public space and outside of a traditional art context, it functions more clearly as a gym than before, but what makes it special is that it’s suspended above water. Furthermore, Nida is a place where people come to rest, restore, and take care of themselves, and this work offers them a unique opportunity to train with art, in the heart of nature.

The gym featuring Greek and Renaissance sculptures is fused with fitness, which speaks directly about the inherited cultural pressure to maintain certain beauty standards. Contemporary culture continues to promote these ideals, and this gym invites people to engage with them — both physically and critically. I appreciate how seamlessly it integrates into the landscape, transforming exercise into a shared, reflective experience, surrounded by the serene lagoon. For this unique idea, I would like to thank Rimvydas Bartkus.

Your practice often engages with overlooked or marginal spaces — from abandoned buildings to private homes, even boats. How do you approach the act of reclaiming or reframing the forgotten? 

If we think of a city as a fabric of different spaces and routes, where each space is designated with a specific function – the overlooked spaces are as pockets with potentiality for a certain activity to appear. I approach it with the question, what kind of activity could there be? Does it make sense to have it?

A lot of your work lives between sculpture, architecture, and participatory installation. How do you navigate the line between form and function in your practice? Is it important that a piece “works”, or is its failure part of the point?

Failure is a part of an artist's practice for every artist. It is much safer to make it in a studio. But when you work outside and improvise, it is not widely understood that failure is part of the artwork itself. The art world in general tends to only place value on success. I had some failures which taught me good lessons. I think it is important that the piece would ‘work’, this should always be the goal.

You’re known for your unconventional material choices — hay, insulation foam, salvaged wood, even food. In the installation Šakotis, on view at gallery Tschudi, Zurich, you recreated the iconic Lithuanian pastry using the real cake, preserved with copper sulfate. How do you think about permanence and decay in your work?

Some of those material choices came as a response to the situations I found myself in while developing an artwork. In other cases, the origin of the material was the departing point. Decay is a fundamental agent of our physical world, just as much as the will to preserve things. For me it is a tool. Especially when I work with wooden houses. I apply some of the restoration methods in order to keep the material in a more permanent state. 

There’s a raw, sometimes fragile quality to your materials — but also humor and intimacy. Are your material choices more intuitive or conceptual? Where does your decision-making usually begin?

My material choices are mostly conceptual. In some cases it can be for practical reasons as well. For the gym piece to be shown outdoors by the seaside – you need stainless steel and different kinds of casting substance compared to the indoors. Or an old abandoned wooden house – it is a conceptual choice to work with that kind of material. In those cases I usually decide later what I will do. Sometimes I have many wooden houses laying around in my studio.

Your work often engages with personal and local histories and resists the polish of commercial presentation. What does identity mean in your work, and how do you balance the personal with the political?

I think commercial presentations can be unpolished as well. It is more about within what kind of gallery and collectors circle you are working with. I think the personal can also be political. Often through small details, you can talk about bigger processes. 

You’re represented by Emalin in London, a gallery known for supporting a new generation of artists with strong voices and practices outside the mainstream. How did that relationship start?

We met through a mutual friend, Jasmine, in Vilnius. At the beginning Emalin didn’t have a permanent space, they did projects in different sites. Actually our first show together was in Salts, in Basel back in 2015 – same place you and I met. And then we inaugurated the first gallery space in Shoreditch, London, in 2016 with my show Housewarming. 

What role does gallery representation play for you beyond sales? Is it about production, visibility, or something else entirely?

It always depends on your relationship with the gallery. Ideally it should be about trust, support, admiration, brainstorming, advising, making exciting projects, meeting new people and transparency. It should be about the balance between business and friendship. And I am lucky to experience it with all my galleries.

Please give us one exhibition recommendation which would be a crime to miss. 

In 2014 at the National Gallery of Art in Lithuania there was a show by Mindaugas Navakas – “Glory was at the Fingertips”. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen. One of the most internationally underrated artists. 

Story by Lilian Hiob-Küttis
Photography by Silver Mikiver