Jurgis Gečys

The Crystal Carpet
Video narrative

It’s a vast ground, all around, with no sense of scale and no signs of life. As I cross it, crack after crack, dusty winds push me away from reaching out to this shimmering white stroke of land at the end of the horizon. As time passes by with countless steps, it still feels as if I were standing where I started. Eventually, it is there, in front of me, too sharp to walk on and too bright to look at — the crystal carpet as my ground.

It’s all about the step, careful and tense, feeling that alien friction and every single particle of its substance. As I slowly walk across it, my feet start to sink and are washed by the cold salty water, deeper and deeper, until I can’t reach the ground — I am floating.

Back on the shore, watching the water draining down my body. All that remained, in a fraction of a blink, so grainy, so thin, was a crystal carpet on my skin. It cloaked my body with no time to fear, just like this shimmering white stroke of land at the end of the horizon I captured to remember.

The Memory of the Ground

The Memory of the Ground begins with an imprint. A fragment of crystallized salt stone, gathered from the desert, was pressed into a surface, transferring the texture of the ground through direct contact. Cast in white, this negative relief holds the memory of a ground that is no longer present.

The work considers the ground as a surface of memory. An encounter passes, while its imprint remains. Pressure, movement, and touch settle into traces that can be carried beyond the place where they originated.

The trace becomes a moving projection of crystalline shimmer. Shifting light travels across the relief, meeting and separating from the physical imprint beneath it. Between the negative relief and its projected presence emerges a space of memory: an interval between what was touched, what remains, and what can be recalled.

The projection unfolds alongside The Crystal Carpet, a narrative drawn from the experience of crossing a vast crystallized landscape. The salt ground, the sharpness beneath each step, the body entering cold salt water, and the crystals left on the skin become fragments through which the landscape is remembered. What remains is an imprint of the ground carried forward through touch, light, and perception.

The Memory of the Ground, 2020, by Jurgis Gečys – white jesmonite sculpture preserving the textured imprint of a crystallized salt stone.

The Memory of the Ground, 2020
Jesmonite cast with video and audio projection
200 × 145 × 4 cm

The Memory of the Ground, 2020, by Jurgis Gečys – jesmonite sculpture with projected light revealing the imprinted surface, Chapter 1.

Excerpt from the video narrative
“crystal carpet as my ground.”

The Memory of the Ground, 2020, by Jurgis Gečys – jesmonite sculpture with video projection, Chapter 2, transforming the imprinted surface through moving light.

Excerpt from the video narrative
“washed by the cold salty water”

The Memory of the Ground, 2020, by Jurgis Gečys – jesmonite sculpture with video projection, Chapter 3, revealing the imprinted surface as a dense field of light.

Excerpt from the video narrative
“crystal carpet on my skin"

The Memory of the Ground, 2020, by Jurgis Gečys – close-up of the jesmonite sculpture showing the textured imprint of a crystallized salt stone.

The Memory of the Ground, 2020, by Jurgis Gečys – detail of the jesmonite sculpture with the crystallized salt stone placed on its imprinted surface.

The Memory of the Ground (Detail), 2020
Jesmonite cast with the embossing of a crystallized salt stone
200 × 145 × 4 cm