Medūza is pleased to present the 60s, Anna-Sophie Berger’s first solo exhibition in Lithuania and the Baltics, featuring a newly commissioned body of work. The show builds on Berger’s recent investigations into the conceptual, social, and aesthetic dimensions of fashion design, and how the contradictions inherent therein shape contemporary perception. This line of inquiry has become a recurring and widely recognized motif in her artistic practice, articulated in exhibitions such as Something for Everyone, Everything for No One in collaboration with Teak Ramos (International Library of Fashion Research, Oslo, 2025), The Years (MAK Geymüllerschlössel, 2023), Mode und Tod (Galerie Emanuel Layr, 2023), and Wealth and Propriety (Lodos Gallery, Mexico City, 2022).
On this occasion, The 60s is framed by two apparently distinct sets of archival images. The first comprises functional, decidedly non-fashion-oriented designs in drawings, sketches, and textile patterns by members of the Artists’ Association’s Soviet-era textile section, spanning the late 1960s to the late 1980s. The second consists of photographs scanned from a polaroid album assembled by the artist’s grandmother as a gift to her father. Taken in the 1960s, they depict clients of the family’s jewelry factory in Austria, seated in the showroom while selecting seasonal styles and placing orders. The apparent distance between these two sets of images is contradicted by an implied narrative of shifting aesthetic codes, shaped by large-scale geopolitical transformations and their effects on lived material conditions. The closure of the “Berla” factory in 2005, prompted in part by the EU’s expansion and the influx of cheaper labor from the member states, parallels how the standardized, uniform codes rehearsed by mid-century designers in Lithuania gradually gave way to Western trends.
In a gesture that mirrors this juxtaposition, Berger presents four new sculptures composed of two pairs of modular forms, each of which can be rearranged and exhibited in stacked or expanded configurations. Echoing the design and material choices present in the aforementioned series of images, the sculptures are dressed in diverse fabrics — some unicolored, others patterned with graphics or houndstooth, wool and synthetics.
The exhibition unfolds across the ground floor of Medūza, extending into the Videocapsule screening room, where a selection of 94 photographs from the photo album will be shown as a slideshow accompanied by the looped second studio album of Led Zeppelin (1969). Extending beyond Medūza, a selection of images from the archive of the Lithuanian Artists’ Union will be presented in a display at the Union’s office located at 2 Vokiečių Str., Vilnius.
Anna-Sophie Berger (b. 1989, Vienna) lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. Her work has been shown, among others, at MAK, Vienna; Bonner Kunstverein; Cell Project Space in London; MUMOK in Vienna; Ludlow 38 in New York; The Glucksman, Cork; MACRO Museum in Rome; S.M.A.K. Ghent; Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius and the Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover. She is the recipient of the 2017 Ars Viva Fine Arts Prize in Germany, the 2016 Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize in Austria and a 2023 recipient of the Pollock Krasner Grant.
Teak, 2025
Aluminum, polyester, thread, screws
A Complete Woman, 2025
Aluminum, polyester, thread, screws
High Middle Low, 2025
Aluminum, wool, thread, screws
Gum Not God, 2025
Aluminum, lycra, thread, screws
Your Time Is Gonna Come, 2025
digital slideshow, variable soundtrack
15:40:00
The artist and the organizers of The 60s would like to use this opportunity to express their sincere gratitude to Benjamin Hirte, Teak Ramos, Patricia Grabauskaite, Lithuanian Artists’ Association, Antanas Gerlikas, Kotryna Butautytė, Eglė Agnė Benkunskytė, Liudvikas Buklys and her Grandmother.
This exhibition was made possible by the support of the Lithuanian Council for Culture and the Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport of the Republic of Austria.