DatesTextImagesBios
Pakui Hardware, 2018

Pakui Hardware

- curated by Borbála Soós

The Return of Sweetness

17 March until 28 April 2018

For their first solo show in London, the duo Pakui Hardware will develop an entirely new project for Tenderpixel’s space, exploring metabolism both as a metaphorical device and as a physical and biological process.

Great vegetables, great organs, greater economy. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. A dozen of apples might today. They say: “The great nutrition collapse” – pointing to the sky and to the soil. The atmosphere is changing the food we eat, for the worse. The atmosphere, you pig, how dare you. Our aubergines are large as ever. And so are our stomachs. They too constantly demand attention. They require being squeezed, divided, reduced, bypassed, monitored. They say: “Boost your metabolism” – pointing to green tea. The return of sweetness after the third cup of pu-erh is sublime. 

Metabolism is not personal. It is engineered. The metabolism of cells rewired to get more efficient, to grant them the ability to generate new products. Fuels, chemicals, foods, and drugs. Not entirely artificial, not wholly organic. Perfect enough to keep the engines running. Just make sure to keep the by-products in a dark dry place.

Pakui Hardware: The Return of Sweetness, solo exhibition at Tenderpixe, London. Images are the courtesy of the artists, EXILE, Berlin and Tenderpixel, London.

Pakui Hardware (Neringa Cerniauskaite and Ugnius Gelguda) are based in Berlin and Vilnius. They work as a collaborative artist duo since 2014. 

Their latest solo shows include Creatures of Habit, Trafó Gallery, Budapest, HU; SIC, Helsinki, FI and Artissima, Turin, IT; On Demand, EXILE, Berlin, DE (all 2017); Vanilla Eyes, MUMOK, Vienna, AT; Transactions, Podium, Oslo, NO (both 2016); Lost Heritage, Kim?, Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, LV and Dawning, Exo Exo, Paris, FR (both 2015); Shapeshifter, Heartbreaker, Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt, DE; The Metaphysics of the Runner, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, LT and 321 Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, US; Shapeshifter, Heartbreaker. On the Ecology of Algorithms, solo event with a performative lecture at IASPIS, Stockholm, and Moderna Museet, Malmö, SE (all 2014). 

Among many others the artists participated in group shows at Kunsthalle Basel, CH; Kunstverein Brauschweig and Kunstverein Freiburg, DE; Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris, FR; PICA, Perth, AU; MMOMA, Moscow, RU; 20th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, Sao Paulo, BR; National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, LT; Kunsthalle Tallinn, ES; Assembly Point, London, UK; Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) Derry~Londonderry, Northern Ireland; Valentin, Paris, FR; Zacheta National Gallery Showroom, Warsaw, PL. The artists were IASPIS grant holders in Sweden, 2014 and residents at Rupert, Vilnius, LT.

Upcoming projects include solo exhibitions at L’Ascensore, Palermo, IT; at Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig (MdbK), DE and at Bielefelder Kunstverein, DE, as well as Jungle Theory, a group show curated by Hugo Vitrani at Domaine Pommery, FR and the13th Baltic Triennial curated by Vincent Honoré at Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, LT.

We are grateful for the support of: