OZE PAX is a self-portrait of Valdas Ozarinskas, captured on VHS, and shown for the first time in a posthumous retrospective of the artist’s work. It stands out among his other self-portraits for its layered allusions to otherness, conveyed through the artist’s gestures and a Hollywood quote. The self-portrait was filmed in Ozarinskas’s office at the Contemporary Art Centre (see the video works Office and Office with Pear), and can thus be read as an expression of his relationship with his work at the institution and with the contemporary art scene more broadly. The field of visual arts, long a space for experimentation and the sharing of diverse ideas, had become a form of constraint, restricting the artist’s architectural ambition. How much of the contemporary arts universe truly belongs to the creator? Is reconciliation possible?

– Virginija Januškevičiūtė

In this video, his head slowly revolves in the centre of the screen as if it does not belong to the artist. This asteroid floats in an irregular orbit in Ozarinskas’ own office at the CAC, which he has just finished designing. Finally, again, Ozė has launched into orbit. Or perhaps he is now stuck in an orbit that is restricting his free flight? Opaque at first sight, just like the dark glasses he wears in the video, the title of the work (why is it “pax”, as in “peace”?) is a reference to a 2001 Hollywood film, in which Kevin Spacey’s character spends his days in a psychiatric hospital waiting to return to his planet K-PAX, located, according to him, approximately a thousand of “our” light-years away

– Virginija Januškevičiūtė, “OZE PAX”, in Architect without Architecture? A Retrospective of Valdas Ozarinskas: exhibition guide, ed.: Virginija Januškevičiūtė, Vilnius: Contemporary Art Centre, 2018, p. 12.