Slow Motion

Five students from Vilnius Academy of Art who attended classes in the 1990s taught by the visiting professor Kęstutis Zapkus moved to New York. They included Žilvinas Kempinas (b. 1969), who, having developed his international career, now creates minimalist kinetic sculptures and installations. Kempinas describes his work Slow Motion as follows: ‘The two most common but contrasting visual perceptions of time, circular and linear, are combined in a single piece by placing working analog clocks (circular movement) in seven lines (linear composition). The clocks have been altered by removing hour hands and leaving only the minute hands. The hands have been set five minutes apart horizontally, although they are synchronized vertically. The movement of the minute hands is unnoticeable if you just look at the piece for a few seconds, but if to use imagination and “speed it up” in your mind, the movement can be perceived as waves. These waves, “drawn” by the minute hands, move at the speed of actual time. It is a manifestation of time at an aesthetic level, something like a slow dance’ (from a conversation between the art collector Rolandas Valiūnas and Žilvinas Kempinas, 15 September 2025).

Text author Laura Petrauskaitė

© VŠĮ „Lietuvos dailės fondas“

Five students from Vilnius Academy of Art who attended classes in the 1990s taught by the visiting professor Kęstutis Zapkus moved to New York. They included Žilvinas Kempinas (b. 1969), who, having developed his international career, now creates minimalist kinetic sculptures and installations. Kempinas describes his work Slow Motion as follows: ‘The two most common but contrasting visual perceptions of time, circular and linear, are combined in a single piece by placing working analog clocks (circular movement) in seven lines (linear composition). The clocks have been altered by removing hour hands and leaving only the minute hands. The hands have been set five minutes apart horizontally, although they are synchronized vertically. The movement of the minute hands is unnoticeable if you just look at the piece for a few seconds, but if to use imagination and “speed it up” in your mind, the movement can be perceived as waves. These waves, “drawn” by the minute hands, move at the speed of actual time. It is a manifestation of time at an aesthetic level, something like a slow dance’ (from a conversation between the art collector Rolandas Valiūnas and Žilvinas Kempinas, 15 September 2025).

Text author Laura Petrauskaitė

© VŠĮ „Lietuvos dailės fondas“