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Lithuanian artist Darius Mikšys‘s works are presened at the group exhibition Last Seen Entering the Biltmore in South London gallery 26 June - 14 September.

Last Seen Entering the Biltmore is a group exhibition which brings together new commissions and existing works that summon ideas of artifice, reminiscent of stage sets and scenographic tools. Instead of conjuring illusionary environments, these works knowingly disclose a perspective from the "backstage". Backstage, in this context, refers to a position that is witness to artistic transformation, experimentation and subversion; a space off-stage or screen where the demands of the centre stage do not apply. Last Seen Entering the Biltmore considers experiences mediated through thresholds such as the TV monitor, cinema screen, theatre curtain, and stage, as well as sets and props - objects suspended between rehearsal and ritual, mimicry and fiction.

Featuring a variety of media including painting, sculpture, film and installation, the exhibited works are less concerned with "the theatre" per se than with "the art of the theatre". This distinction was made by the British playwright Howard Barker and on this occasion is used in reference to instances when theatre is dragged from its confines and explored through another art form. Works include American artist William Leavitt’s scenic stage architectures, which are inspired by soap operas and the plays of Alain Robbe Grillet: sometimes they are built for plays, at other times they stand alone. His works elicit a blankness of southern Californian suburbs, of patios and bungalows, architecture of the oblique, paired with deadpan dialogues, which reveal the absurdity of the banal. Allison Katz's new commission for the exhibition combines her graphic work and painting, taking the form of a poster announcing, and displayed alongside, a new large-scale painting. In Color Pieces, pioneering video artist Nan Hoover created spatial ambiguities through a muted colour spectrum and subtle play of shadows and lights that are as much a test or rehearsal as a final piece of work. 

Darius Mikšys was born in 1969 in Lithuania. His varied projects include the attempted production of Gilles Peterson's shroud; proposing an ABBA museum in Qantas plane for Tempelhof airport in Berlin; creating a body of sculptures titled My Jeff Koons; organizing performance series Artists’ Parents’ Meeting; and establishing the very first Lithuanian cricket club named Abdul Aziz's Holiday IX. Mikšys has recently shown work at the ICA, London, 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, the 54th Venice Biennale 2011 and at numerous international institutions.

Last Seen Entering the Biltmore is curated by Anna Gritz, the South London Gallery’s Associate Curator (Film, Performance and Talks).

More about the exhibition and participating artists: http://www.southlondongallery.org/page/144/Last-Seen-Entering-the-Biltmore/989