STILL (A LITTLE LIFE) @ THE HALL

07.03.2026

11.04.2026

with Neven Allgeier, Judith Eisler, and Pakui Hardware

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The ceiling of THE HALL, far above, leaves space for a light in which there is permanence - a light evenly diffused, entering the space from above and settling softly across walls and objects. There is a grey linoleum floor, quite hostile, amplifying the feeling of not lingering too long. This is the room in which you are standing.

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“The silence. The silence. But what happens during the silences?” Jonas Mekas writes.

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Late in the afternoon, the sun was attempting to set, a moth flew in, circled the space, realized its error, and flew out through a hole in the skylight, where a thin beam of light makes countless dust particles dance.

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I relate this small incident, because it seems to me to have something to do, with NEVEN ALLGEIER’s photographs. They, too, capture (like the moth) the light onto which faces and bodies warmly glow. Again, Jonas Mekas comes to mind: “I feel the sun, I feel the lightness, I see the landscape, the trees, the flowers”. Light in Neven’s work give me pleasure. Some of his photographs resemble looking through cheap plastic children’s sunglasses, softening the gaze on flowers, raindrops, colors, surfaces, and architecture. The air seems saturated with silence, stripped of daily noise. In one of his texts, Neven’s friend, the writer Bebe Fischer, sits on the shore of a fishing lake. He watches the egrets, their elegance, recalling the peace of that moment, and recognizing that life is made up of such fleeting, blissful states.

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All the works in this space scatter small fragments of time, glimpses of life, whether paused, suspended, captured in a single moment or simply being observed more closely.

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A cinema film runs at 24 frames per second. When John Berger asks, “How many frames per second flicker past in our daily perception?” and speaks of those “brief moments, suddenly and disconcertingly, in which we see between two frames,” heinvites us to look beyond narrative continuity and the moving image as it conventionally appears on the screen. Such moments suspend the flow of time and loosen the bond before and after.

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JUDITH EISLER, in turn, pauses the cinematic image to uncover something never intended to be seen. By holding a single frame still, she paints what trembles within it: a nocturnal walk in falling snow that leaves open whether the figure approaches or recedes; Maria looking backward as the car moves forward beneath a canopy of trees; John making coffee in the kitchen, an intimate gesture fractured by distortions of light and pattern. In these images, figures hover between past and present, and the next frame exists only as a possibility. As the viewer moves closer, these staged realities dissolve into vibrating fragments of color.

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There is one scene in one of my favorite films, Blade Runner by Ridley Scott, that almost haunts me: Roy Batty, the leader of the renegade replicants, finally confronts his creator, Dr. Eldon Tyrell, dressed in a white robe with a doctoral gravity, about his impending demise. When Tyrell asks what he wants, Roy responds, “I want more life, fucker,” a word that blends “fucker” and “father”, raw and desperate.

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Operating tables, mechanical arms and glass lenses in PAKUI HARDWARE’s The Host echo Tyrell’s godlike role: absolute, yet distant. Life is possible, but only through hierarchical, remote control. The host body does not own itself. It becomes a vessel, an optimized surface for labor, measurement, and experiment. Telemedicine, robotic surgery, hands that never touch flesh yet exert authority, create a “cold intimacy”: extreme closeness without compassion, a post-organic form of care. Assembled from glass, textiles, resin, latex, metal, and plastic, these bodies function as composite systems, where organic and synthetic elements are inseparable.

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Time moves on. Life goes on. And in the stillness, this little life persists.

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Curated by Barbara Horvath

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The Lithuanian artists’ duo Pakui Hardware will be in residence at PART from March to May 2026.

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Exhibition duration: 07.03. - 11.04.2026, @ THE HALL

Exhibition Opening: Saturday, March 7, 2026, 6-9 pm @ THE HALL

Opening remarks by:

ALEXANDRA GRAUSAM, Director PART

LINA RUKŠTELIENĖ, Ambassador of the Republic of Lithuania