Exclave: A portion of territory of one state completely surrounded by territory of another or others, as viewed by the home territory.

It seems rather the moment now in July 2019, when it is the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the man to the moon, to tell how I felt the first time I approached the work of ateate. This spacial odyssey to the silver satellite provided to the passengers of the Apollo XI, among other things, a new visual repertoire that got fixed in their minds forever.

I like to think, even if exaggerating, that these otherworldly experiences must have been rather similar to the first impressions I had when I looked at ateate collages. I remember quite strongly that it gave me a sense of strangeness that increased progressively in my rational mind. I recognized the formal aspect of the work, collages made in a classical manner, but the images they´ve built transported me to worlds I was not sure still existed in this overcharged planet full of meaningless imagery.

The relevance of ateate work is manifested through the ability of the artists to bring out their visionary inner world. We have to change our minds here. ateate works out of the codes of the system and most importantly they have fun while doing it. They laugh at us, they make fun of us and with us, they build these images freely and the result is somehow uncanny and yet an accurate reflection of our schizophrenic society, thus weirdly relevant.

*ateate is an anonymous collective which started its activity in 2002, since then they have been working together and separately (we will never know to whom the hands belong which made the works). Exclave is the first solo show of the Lithuanian group at the gallery.