HAYWARD & TAMAYO installation fragment by Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo janitorial dept., 2016. Kunstverein Munich. Foto Darius Mikšys

Darius Mikšys (born 1969) is an artist of ideas, often introduced simply as a concept designer. With projects such as creating video footage of a parapsychology fair at the Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports, the sale of an empty bottle of perfume on eBay, or the proposal to the Tempelhof Airport in Berlin that an ABBA museum be founded in a Qantas aircraft, he offers a new approach to art, the artist, the artwork, and its viewer. Mikšys not only erases the boundary between art and non-art, but also entirely refuses to use these notions in the post-global context, or repeatedly “invents” them in his works. At the same time, several of his projects, particularly those that rely on collaboration, highlight the social aspect of the practice of art, raising issues around art and society, as well as around (state) politics. 

‘Behind the White Curtain’, with which he represented Lithuania at the Venice Biennale in 2011 is his most ambitious project to date. Therein, Mikšys presented a visual art collection comprised of works produced over the last decade, which several hundred artists had received state grants to create over a period of ten years. The jury of the Venice Biennale awarded the Lithuanian pavilion a Special Mention for its “conceptually elegant and productively ambiguous framing of a nation’s art history”. 

Darius Mikšys has presented his projects at Kunstverein in Munich, Manifesta 8 Biennial in Murcia (Spain, 2010), the 10th Baltic Triennial of International Art in Vilnius (2009), Performa 09 Biennial in New York (2009), the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008), Gasworks project space in London (2007), and the 9th Lyon Biennale (2007).