Jurgis Gečys

Salt Coast, 2019. Black-and-white analogue photograph showing a vast, pale coastal landscape with subtle ground textures, scattered dark traces and a nearly disappearing horizon.

The Inceptive Ground, texture volume 01

Analogue Black-and-White Photography Series, 2018

Salt Coast, 2019
Black & white silver gelatin print
50 × 60 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

The multimedia project The Inceptive Ground, texture volume 01, sets out to unlearn the constructed knowledge of place, moving beyond geographical labels, historical narratives, and cartographic boundaries to ask: how might one approach a landscape without calling it by name? The work explores perception through a lens of estrangement, an encounter that is raw, slow, and unmediated. A way of seeing that resists definition. That begins before language.

Inspired by a question posed by psychologist James J. Gibson, “When does perception end and memory begin?”, the project asks instead: “When does memory end, and when does perception begin?” The inversion reframes perception as something that could precede memory, a way of seeing untouched by association.

To enter a seemingly endless terrain, a solitary bicycle journey unfolded over 119 days along the 70th western meridian in the southern hemisphere, from the driest deserts in the north, through volcanoes, lofty mountain regions, vast open plains, and surreal mirages in between, all the way to the eternal ice in the south. The journey was undertaken with a tent, a sleeping bag, and a small analog camera with twelve black-and-white films.

The extreme slowness of movement, exposed to wind, dust, and long silences, allowed the surface of the ground, its textures, weight, and physical impact to be observed and absorbed. Over time, the horizon ceased to be a distant edge and began to move with the body, shaping each step, each breath, each quiet shift in direction.

Along the way, wide segments of ground structure were documented. Through visual abstraction, these observations took shape in analog photography, sculpture, and large-format hand drawings built up over years with countless ink dots. The works move toward a visual language that is subtle, barely visible, and incomplete, echoing a sense of perception that evades clarity and resists being fully grasped. These gestures open a space where memory, perception, body, and matter begin to dissolve into one another. Somewhere between erosion and emergence, a form of presence begins to unfold, shaped through experience, rhythm, and material encounter.

Alien Landscape, 2019. Black-and-white analogue photograph from The Inceptive Ground, texture volume 01, showing an abstract, almost featureless terrain with subtle tonal shifts, scattered stones and barely visible ground structures.

Alien Landscape, 2019
Black-and-white silver gelatin print
50 × 60 cm

The Crystal Carpet, 2019
Black & white silver gelatin print
50 × 60 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

The Crystal Carpet

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 Crystal Carpet on My Skin, 2019. Black-and-white analogue photograph showing a close view of a shoulder and upper body covered with fine crystalline salt traces.

The Crystal Carpet on My Skin, 2019
Black & white silver gelatin print
50 × 60 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

Marble Erosion, 2019. From the analogue photography series The Inceptive Ground, texture volume 01. Black & white silver gelatin print, 50 × 60 cm. Edition of 3 + 1 AP.

Marble Erosion, 2019
Black & white silver gelatin print
50 × 60 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

Eroded Marble Texture, 2019. From the analogue photography series The Inceptive Ground, texture volume 01. Black & white silver gelatin print, 50 × 60 cm. Edition of 3 + 1 AP.

Eroded Marble Texture, 2019
Black & white silver gelatin print
50 × 60 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

Suspended Landscape, 2019. Black-and-white analogue photograph showing a fragmented rocky ground seemingly suspended above a pale, almost empty spatial field.

Suspended Landscape, 2019
Black & white silver gelatin print
50 × 60 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

Fractured Landscape, 2019. Black-and-white analogue photograph showing a rocky landscape resting on glacier ice, divided by a visible crack through the ground.

Fractured Landscape, 2019
Black & white silver gelatin print
50 × 60 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

Tierra del Fuego Shore, 2019. Black-and-white analogue photograph showing a windswept shore with layered, flowing surface formations shaped across the ground.

Tierra del Fuego Shore, 2019
Black & white silver gelatin print
50 × 60 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP