You might need to spend a little more time with the work of Lithuanian designer Vilius Dringelis. The longer you look, the more details begin to emerge. Be it a chandelier, a table, or a vase, each object carries subtle elements held within its surface: fragments of text, found objects, a heart shape.
These details are traces of the city, collected during Vilius’ walks through places he knows intimately or where he allows himself to wander and get lost. His process involves 3D scanners and printers, and the use of the latest technologies, but it begins with chance encounters and the fragility of aluminium foil. The result is a series of objects that leave space for technological flaws, the unexpected, and the poetic.
In this interview, we spoke about his collectible design objects, the ideas he’s interested in right now, and his connection to his home city of Vilnius. You can see his work at the Tactile Baltics exhibition, among Adorno’s Future50 designers, and soon at Vienna Design Week.
Hi Vilius, how are you and where are you now?
Fresh! It is early morning and after a very long time I am on my way by train to Palanga, to the Baltic Sea. This is an old Lithuanian resort, where this year for the first time the event Palanga Art Weekend will take place. Some of my works will also be exhibited in a group exhibition of contemporary artists curated by Milda Dainovskytė. The exhibition is taking place in an old, exceptional late modernist resort villa, Vila Auska. I am very excited to see how the works are integrated into this building.
I will spend some time at the exhibition, enjoy the sea, the dunes and the sun in the city. Then I will join friends to go to the small town of Kintai, where we will live on a barge on the canals and watch birds in the reserves, and spend some time in nature.
What are you working on at the moment?
At the moment I am intensively thinking about the concept of new objects. I plan to use materials like clay and glass that I have never worked with before. I will try to integrate them into my existing practice and at the same time expand the possibilities of self-expression and discover new ways. In this process of exploration, I am most interested in the production of reverse shapes and the non-standard tools that can be used to create objects in cast clay. Of course, as always in these contexts, I plan to use 3D scanning and printing technologies.
Abstractly speaking, I’m currently interested in the theme of confrontation, incompatibility, so I’m researching how I can make sense of it in my work. Also, I have various foil stamps in my archives from Paris, which I collected during the Olympics, as well as some from the Costa Blanca region of Spain, etc. So I also plan to make them into objects in the context of the search for ways to use clay and glass materials. For this activity I received a grant from the Lithuanian Council for Culture, so I am grateful to be able to experiment and try to discover new methods in practice.
How did you first start working with aluminium foil?
I started working with aluminium foil unexpectedly. During the Covid-19 pandemic and the quarantine period, I was looking for new methods and a fresh approach to my work. At that time, like everybody else, I had to isolate myself in my loft and the Wolt home delivery app was spreading fast in the community, so I finally started using it too. Once, a courier brought ramen noodles to the studio, which were per usual wrapped in foil to preserve heat. Intuitively, when I unwrapped the packaging, I noticed a beautiful organic shape that resembled a vase. So I kept that and looked for a way to experiment with turning it into a decorative design object. After using the techniques I described earlier, I found that the foil material was particularly conducive to capturing different shapes, so I started applying it more widely in the process.
I am glad that this vase not only accidentally helped me to discover material for future work, but also captured a relevant anthropological phenomenon of isolation during Covid-19, which is why I called this piece With You.
Reading about your process I found interesting how you combine elements of what you see and find in the city, and work in the studio with 3D printing. How does it all come together?
This practice started with aimlessly walking around different cities and observing the environment, architecture, people, cultural and anthropological phenomena, while I was trying to discover myself. As I have always loved to observe society, to explore it in every sense, this passion later integrated the foil material with which I make imprints to record and document various phenomena or forms. This tool has become like a camera or a diary for me. Also, while walking around the city and provoking my experience as an engineer, I start to interpret the various details I find, play with them in my mind, think about how they could be reworked into new shapes and used in design. The foil in this context becomes a great tool for sampling and reworking.
So, in the first stage, I collect various imprints in the city, then I combine them together, digitise with a 3D scanner and prepare the models for 3D printing. I then use the printed models as an aid to create moulds for the traditional craft of metal casting. I like that at each stage there are uncontrollable factors, errors or traces of modern technology, which give the final result a unique quality. Most importantly, various reused signs and symbols from different periods of the city appear in each work, creating a dialogue with each other.
For example, one of my most significant recent works is the Vilnius Film Festival Kino Pavasaris awards statuettes, for which I have collected special foil stamps with stories related to this film festival and the city of Vilnius. In the end, these stamps created urban abstract flowers with eyes that had special symbolism.
I have received many comments that my works look like artefacts from after the apocalypse, marking our human-made world and the fragments that remain. Maybe it’s the combination of my different experiences that creates this effect.
Many artists find inspiration in the city, working with chance and found objects. Do you have any that inspire you?
I can’t say that this is the kind of work that inspires me and that I draw on. The urban theme did not come from a planned strategy. It happened because the material for the work was just at hand, it happened organically, so I didn’t look too much at other artists.
Maybe I’m just more inspired by the various misunderstandings and misinterpretations, where people use things in ways that are not their original purpose, interpret them in their own way, and thus create wonderful cultural or scientific phenomena. I see the world as constantly evolving, revealing all kinds of surprises. It’s interesting that sometimes when we don’t fully understand a moment, an action, we retell it in our own way according to our intuition in different contexts. That is what I find very interesting.
So I find inspiration everywhere and in very different contexts. Today, I watched online the new Maison Margiela collection, which was designed by Glenn Martens. It was a very inspiring event, from the set design to the music and the clothes, especially the masks made of crushed vintage tin cans. Also, in this context of repurposed objects, I once quite liked the Friedman Benda Gallery’s exhibition Accidents Will Happen.
Industrial production of design objects rely on precision and reproducibility, how do you relate to that in your work?
It’s very interesting to see the different creative strategies and possibilities in industrial design or small series production. In industry a lot depends on production capabilities, on the preparation of technical drawings. But in collectible design, which can sometimes be more about handwork, we can expect a lot of inaccuracies and accidents, which can infuse the object with a lot of energy. That’s why, when I’m working on my projects, I enjoy the fact that the combination of different disciplines, such as modern technology, re-creations and traditional crafts, provokes various paradoxes. So I largely focus on the moment, which results in a more organic imprecision.
The imprecise imprinting of the shapes in foil and combining them together, which involves a lot of handwork, then the imprecise 3D scanning, the 3D printing with slightly imperfect settings, the metal casting – it all creates layers of production that are out of my control.
Letting the process unfold is something that would be difficult to achieve logically using technical drawings. I have nothing against industrial production, it would be interesting to work on these projects in that context as well, but we just have to understand that design can be different and that the modernist way is not always the only way.
Some of your objects have evocative titles, like Dinner in Brussels. What is the story with this one?
A few years ago, I exhibited at the Collectible Design Fair in Brussels, Belgium, with the Vartai Gallery stand. This was my first time at this event. In the evening, after the show, I was going to dinner at a café with a couple of friends. On the way there a piece of foil wrapping from a kebab or sandwich was picked up from the trash can by the wind and flew into my hands. I took this accidental piece of foil with me and the next day went to the European Parliament, where I imprinted some symbolic imprints with it.
I was very happy that the next year I came back to the same fair, the stands of Adorno Future50 and the Vartai Gallery, showing this new work made with those imprints. It was a kind of symbolic circle of time.
You participated in Tactile Baltics exhibition last MDW with the candle holder Vilnius Wastewater, how was that experience?
I am very thankful for the opportunity to take part in this beautiful group show, curated by talented organisers. I think this is a very important exhibition for our Baltic region and its design culture, and that there could be more events like this. I was very impressed by the Palazzo Litta, where the exhibition was held. In such an interior, the works on display can reveal and communicate themselves in an even different way.
I read you live in Vilnius, what’s your relationship with the city and Lithuania?
I was born and grew up in Vilnius, where I was formed as a teenager, so I probably know every inch of it and feel its emotions. It’s a city that really has its own authentic face. I have seen its transformation and how everything has blossomed here since independence. Today, I like the relationship between the quiet modern city and the nature in it, and I hope that we will move even more towards a green course, because the people here are very intelligent, responsible and care about this city. When I want even more peace, I go to the woods by the lakes, and when I want to socialise, I go back to my friends in the city, which I feel to be very open. I truly care about what it becomes because I have a deep relationship with this city from my childhood.
There are many wonderful culturally vibrant cities and romantic towns in Europe that are always a pleasure to return to or to discover, but Lithuania in this context attracts me not only as a homeland, but also with its poetic, slow and cosy calmness, because there is a lot of comfortable and convenient space for a quality lifestyle and creativity.
What do you have planned for the next few months?
I have some near future plans for exhibitions. In September I am planning to participate in Vienna Design Week, one of the exhibitions in its programme, which this year will be curated by Sandra Nuut and will feature various international designers. This month and the next I will be taking part in the Tactile Baltics exhibition in Latvia, as well as some interesting local group exhibitions in Lithuania.
But mostly I will be working on new ideas and methods. Sometimes I light up like a match and sometimes I become a slower romantic and think more, so maybe it’s time to create at least a minimum discipline in these contrasting periods.
If you want to know more about Vilius Dringelis’ work, have a look at its website viliusdringelis.com or check his Instagram account @viliusdringelis.
