The Head

Film “The Head” is edited out of existing footage and photo material from the 60’s and 70’s featuring process of creation of the largest head (portrait) monument in the world modeled by sculptor Lev Yefimovitch Kerbel. This monument to Karl Marx was erected in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) in 1971. All the used materials for this film were produced by official DDR Television for the purpose of information and propaganda. It documents a unique process in its scope and intensions, which could be understood as anachronistic, or sharply contradicting with current aesthetics of public spaces in most European cities. |

Deimantas Narkevicius was born in 1964 in Utena, Lithuania and lives and works in Vilnius. He graduated from the Art Academy in Vilnius as a sculptor and spent a year in London in 1992/93. On his return to Lithuania he was concerned with site-specific objects but a strong interest in narrative led him to record interviews and conversations with artists. This process evolved into an exploration of different narrative structures through film and video, the work for which Narkevicius is now best known.Narkevicius is one of the most consistent and widely recognised Lithuanian artists on the international art scene. He represented his country at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 and exhibits at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 in ‘Utopia Station’ curated by Molly Nesbit and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Since 1992 he has exhibited extensively around the world in group shows at many significant contemporary art venues and events. He showed at Manifesta II in Luxemburg in 1998 and has exhibited in London, Paris, Brussels, Vilnius, Manchester, Dublin, Vienna, Brussels, Helsinki, Stockholm, Zurich, Rotterdam, Melbourne and many other cities. Solo shows include ‘Either true or fictitious’, at FRAC Pays de la Loire in France in 2003 and ‘Deimantas Narkevicius Project’ at the Munchner Kunstverein, Munich in 2002.