rytas jurgelis balta upė

Metaphor Cities by Julius Keleras

 

 

 

Metaphors are dynamic and viscid. They are agile and unpredictable. The river is one of them, especially the white one. This river, usually frozen in January, associates with neat river currents, coming back to us from our childhood... Also snow, cold, ice field which helps to cross to the other bank, impossible to reach this way in summer. The other bank is always a mistery, a secret, the unknown. Only after crossing the white frozen river, we can decide which bank is better - the one you are on, you live on or the one which is out of reach (or seldom reachable).

 

Rytas Jurgelis’ river is also a metaphor. It is a river which needs to be crossed. I can’t tell if it’s frozen. Perhaps, even its creator would not know this; and he doesn’t need to - he and the river are one, which carries us to our personal associations, belonging to the world of images, but not to the geographical knowledge. Fact knowledge sometimes gives powers, but its boundaries are liminted, not known to the white river, flowing to multiple directions across little squares, looking for its meaning, its path, its own boudaries that never freeze. The river is invisible in metaphysics of little squares. The image narrative carried by the river is a journey which excites and invigorates the imagination. Of course, for a moment, one might associate the plane divided into little squeres with jail or closed zones that might be overcome only by Stalkers. For someone, this confining plane is truth which sooner or later would be carried away by the powerful stream of the river, because it has its own expression. The river is invincible.

 

It seems as if time in the white river becomes space, and all existing laws of physics are nulled. To me, the vortexing Rytas’ square is like a humanistic message transmitted into the space, like a meditative hieroglyph to decipher which might take a lifetime. Therefore white, black or colored square it might be, it inevitably ends up in the white river, turning into an abstract philosophical parable and, at the same time, physical tangibility.

Void and infinity, the origin and irrevocable finale manifest as unique unity in the river-rafter Rytas’ quivering microcosmos which can, and should be, reflected creatively. And maybe one can even feel happy as all signs point to a white boat, going down this white river one day.