Exhibitions  /   BREAKING THE JOINTS
Exhibition

BREAKING THE JOINTS

04/04/2025–31/12/2025

Artists: Gabrielė Adomaitytė, Ed Atkins, Martin Arnold, Catherine Biocca, Aline Bouvy, Barry Doupé, Peter Frederiksen, Özgür Kar, Tomasz Kowalski, Oliver Laric, Ebecho Muslimova, Nadia Naveau, Agnieszka Polska, Jani Ruscica, Mateusz Sadowski, Gary Simmons, Viktor Timofeev, Theo Triantafyllidis

 

Curators: Post Brothers, Edgaras Gerasimovičius

Assistant curator: Povilas Gumbis

 

  • Özgür Kar. Death playing the clarinet, 2023. 2-channel video, sound, duration – 12’. Courtesy of the Artist, and Emalin, London, and Edouard Montassut, Paris. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Nadia Naveau. Funny Five Minutes (Goofin’ Around), 2018. Blue stone powder, polyester, 180 × 230 × 160 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and private collection. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Jani Ruscica. Polynoknot (and they bloom), 2023. 4K video, shuffle play, stereo sound, endless duration. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Martin Arnold. Whistle Stop, 2014. Digital animation, duration – 3’33”. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Ebecho Muslimova. FATEBE TOAD SELF, 2024. Acrylic, high definition UV ink and oil paint on canvas, 182,88 × 182,88 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Bernheim Gallery, London, Zurich. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • “Breaking the Joints”, exhibition view. Sapieha Palace, Vilnius. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Viktor Timofeev. April 5th 2024, 2024. Graphite on paper, 22,225 × 31,115 cm. (foreground); and Jani Ruscica. Polynoknot (and they bloom), 2023. 4K video, shuffle play, stereo sound, endless duration. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Tomasz Kowalski. Coil, 2024. Oil and gouache on jute, 2 parts, 116 × 165 × 2 cm, overall 116 × 330 × 2 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Sylwia and Piotr Krupa. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • “Breaking the Joints”, exhibition view. Sapieha Palace, Vilnius. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Barry Doupé. Red House, 2022. 2d computer animation, duration –3’, sound design by James Whitman. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • “Breaking the Joints”, exhibition view. Sapieha Palace, Vilnius. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Barry Doupé. Nude, 2021. Plaster, drywall compound, aluminium foil, acrylic paint, 41,9 × 30,5 × 22,9 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Barry Doupé. Boot, 2022. Polymer clay, aluminium foil, 27,9 × 38,1 × 15,2 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • “Breaking the Joints”, exhibition view. Sapieha Palace, Vilnius. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Peter Frederiksen. Determination., 2023. Freehand machine embroidery on linen, 12,7 × 17,8 cm; Ramshackle machinations, 2023. Freehand machine embroidery on linen, 12,7 × 17,8 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Catherine Biocca. FULL TIME TRAGEDY, 2016. PVC banner, built in tablet with animation in loop, no sound, 100 x 40 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • “Breaking the Joints”, exhibition view. Sapieha Palace, Vilnius. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Theo Triantafyllidis. Radicalisation Pipeline, 2022. 2-channel live simulation, gaming PC, endless duration. Sound by Diego Navarro. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Nadia Naveau. Green Silver Screen, 2006. Epoxy, mixed media, 135 × 70 × 24 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and collection Franco-Janssen. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Tomasz Kowalski. Untitled, 2024. Oil and gouache on jute, wood frame, 64 x 114 x 4,5 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Łukasz Górka. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • “Breaking the Joints”, exhibition view. Sapieha Palace, Vilnius. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Aline Bouvy. PUP I, 2018 Fabrics, ceramics, watercolour, epoxy, motor, wire, glass, artificial hair, wood, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artist and IKOB – Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst; Primitive Accumulation, 2019. Ceramic bisque, watercolour, one cent pieces, 35 × 23 × 18 cm; The Narrator, 2019. Ceramic bisque, watercolour, 20 × 10 × 12 cm; PUP II (version 2), 2020. Ceramic bisque, watercolour, hair, glass eyes, 10 × 28 × 33 cm; PUP III, 2020. Ceramic bisque, watercolour, 17 × 27 × 35 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Aline Bouvy. PUP I, 2018 Fabrics, ceramics, watercolour, epoxy, motor, wire, glass, artificial hair, wood, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artist and IKOB – Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Aline Bouvy. The Narrator, 2019. Ceramic bisque, watercolour, 20 × 10 × 12 cm; PUP II (version 2), 2020. Ceramic bisque, watercolour, hair, glass eyes, 10 × 28 × 33 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Aline Bouvy. Primitive Accumulation, 2019. Ceramic bisque, watercolour, one cent pieces, 35 × 23 × 18 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Aline Bouvy. PUP III, 2020. Ceramic bisque, watercolour, 17 × 27 × 35 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Tomasz Kowalski. Untitled (Train), 2024. Oil and gouache on jute, 98 × 152 x 4,5 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Tomasz Pasiek. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Peter Frederiksen. Caught, off guard, again., 2024. Freehand machine embroidery on linen, 15,24 × 20,3 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Ed Atkins. Even Pricks, 2013. HD video, 5.1 surround sound, duration – 8’. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • “Breaking the Joints”, exhibition view. Sapieha Palace, Vilnius. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Oliver Laric. Hermanubis, 2021. SLS Nylon, SLA resin, acrylic paint, aluminium base, 230 × 54,5 × 73.5 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Los Angeles. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Gabrielė Adomaitytė. Hold Between Frames, 2025. Oil on linen, 205 × 400 × 4,5 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Gratin, New York. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Gabrielė Adomaitytė. Absolute Angle, 2025. Oil on linen, 205 × 400 × 4,5 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Gratin, New York. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • “Breaking the Joints”, exhibition view. Sapieha Palace, Vilnius. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Mateusz Sadowski. Time Settings, 2022. 4K video, stop-motion animation, sound, duration – 6’22” (foreground); and Time Settings, 2022. Object from the animation, xerox prints, cardboard, plasticine, 285 × 35 × 30 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Mateusz Sadowski. Time Settings, 2022. Object from the animation, xerox prints, cardboard, plasticine, 285 × 35 × 30 cm. (fragment). Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Gary Simmons. Twins, 2011. Pastel on paper, 2 panels, each: 106,7 × 76,2 cm / Overall: 106,7 × 153,7 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Agnieszka Polska. Correction Exercises, 2008. Video, sound, duration – 8’02’’. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Oliver Laric. Hundemensch, 2018. Polyurethane, 53 × 52 × 58 cm. (foreground); and Hundemensch, 2018. Polyurethane, pigment, 53 × 52 × 58 cm. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Jani Ruscica. Companion Piece (Purple Movement), 2025. Site-specific mural, glass paint on glass windows (fragment). Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Jani Ruscica. Companion Piece (Purple Movement), 2025. Site-specific mural, glass paint on glass windows (fragment). Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
  • Barry Doupé. Bubble Boing, 2017. 3D computer animation, duration – 7’38”. Photographer: Andrej Vasilenko
Exhibition’s guide

‘Breaking the Joints’ is a group exhibition and event programme that considers the status of the body within the history of animation, elaborating on the essential concepts of cartoons, while also examining what these modes of world-building can tell us about our world today. 

 

Back in the 1930s, animators were faced with a problem: the rubber-hose style of rendering bodies in motion was too fluid, abstracted, and without physical structure, while rotoscoping – the practice of tracing over live-action footage – resulted in rigid mechanical movements without vitality. The Disney animator and labour rights activist Art Babbitt came up with a solution: to give force, flexibility, and believability to animated bodies, one must successively ‘break their joints’. Indeed, they discovered that to give characters flesh and bone, solidity and weight, they had to disfigure their anatomy. This method suggests a certain violence and trauma at the heart of the cartoon world, but also a pliability and plasticity of the body and matter itself, demonstrating a counter-intuitive principle that animated realism requires a bending of physical laws. 

 

Once relegated to the periphery as a popular art form for children’s entertainment, animation has become integral in all media production, a code through which all images and constructions are composited. At the same time, scholars across and between disciplines are increasingly turning to animation to examine not only social and physical transmutations in our society and our media but also to reconsider material objects and relations through a renewed and speculative understanding of animist, agential, and vitalist principles. As such, animation is not simply a specific historically-bound practice of techniques and conventions for moving images but can be regarded as an epistemology, a way of understanding and relating, that offers new possibilities for socio-political, cultural, and ecological critique and embodied transformation. 

 

With a nod to the Sapieha Palace’s former use as a military hospital and ophthalmology clinic, ‘Breaking the Joints’ explores animation’s fusion of optics and anatomy, and considers legacies of bodily disfigurement and manipulation. In their works, the exhibited artists draw from and critically deploy animated tropes and techniques to address bodily anxieties and material relationships, media and trauma. More than simply giving the ‘illusion of life’, animation is, in fact, also an uncanny pact with death, occupying an interval between the emergence and dissolution of form. At the heart of it all is a narrative of the cartoon body, which often serves for the artists as a figure for the outsider, the objectified, the inhuman, the abnormal, the wounded, the dummy, the goof. Squashed and stretched, contorted and fragmented, the elastic and abstracted body of the cartoon functions for many of the artists as a model for limitless malleability, a freedom and transgression of biological constraints, hierarchies, and social norms in the face of the absurdities of reality. The exhibition considers a tension at the heart of animation: between animation as a narrative of liberation, metamorphosis, and transformation, and animation as a cyclical mechanised disciplining of the body full of violence and bittersweet gags.   

 

Patron of CAC and Sapieha Palace: reefo

Informational partners: LRT, Žmonės

Partners: Polish Institute in Vilnius, Meno Avilys

Sponsors: frame, Corner

 

Exhibition architecture: Vladas Suncovas

Graphic design: Jonė Miškinytė

Consultation: Marija Repšytė

Coordinator: Povilas Gumbis

Production: Kipras Garla, Povilas Gumbis, Vladas Suncovas, Baltic Art Force

Communication: Giedrė Ivanova, Luka Jefremovaitė, Danielius Radis

Technical implementation: Jokūbas Čižikas, Antanas Dombrovskij, Almantas Lukoševičius, Lukas Strolia, Matas Šatūnas, Ilona Virzinkevič

Copy editing: Gemma Lloyd, Dangė Vitkienė, Gintautė Žemaitytė

Executive Director of Sapieha Palace: Gintautė Žemaitytė