A Confrontation of Faces and Reflections

Contemporary Lithuanian graphic arts have many faces. Although painstaking handwork and unique style are characteristic to many works, conceptual artistic gestures have become increasingly important. Graphic arts are not only a dance of perfect lines. For artists participating in the exhibition, graphic arts are an exercise in thinking; the viewer engaged in it starts seeing environment or him/herself differently. The artists are interested in clashes between prints and different realities: images from dreams, films and art history intertwine with fragments of everyday reality. Time in works exhibited here is no less important than space, and personal experience, than historical upheavals.

Eglė Vertelkaitė is among the most conceptual Lithuanian graphic artists. It is possible to recognise her works easily from their horizontal format: chosen motifs reverberate like echo against the edge of a picture and are repeated in another work. The line marks not the separation of form and space, but time. As if the artist was drawing a giant staff and people were notes. Vertelkaitė subtly connects ‘high’ art and domestic or even kitschy motifs: roses, hearts and glasses of wine next to characters permeated with existential concerns only emphasise the drama. It is interesting that in Vertelkaitė’s works one could often meet people well known in the art world: Cindy Sherman, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp or a sword devourer from Diane Arbus’s photographs. This exceptional company is not just popular icons: not only their images, but also ideas communicate.

Kęstutis Grigaliūnas also willingly communicates with filmed and photographed heroes. The playful spirit of fluxus reigns in his works. At the first sight Grigaliūnas‘s prints remind of pop art. However, something else than mass culture phenomena are hidden under kitsch garments. Film stills he has selected, for instance from Persona by Ingmar Bergman, are by no means accidental. Characters staring at each other and at the same time analysing themselves are a reflection of our inter-screen being. A contemporary man or woman flusters among many reflections: cinema, television, internet and photography. A graphic print becomes a great means to make all these reflections confront each other.

We live in times of excess visual information, thus, a gaze at oneself becomes relevant like never before. Irma Balakauskaitė creates self-portraits from darkness, water and vapour. Such an impression forms when looking at her works. These are like translated self-portraits, self-portraits-masks, reflections observing themselves. Even portraits of others become a form of self-portrait for Balakauskaitė. In her faces we look not for recognisable features or the artist’s attributes, but states of minds that soak into the sheet of paper and become almost palpable. It seems that the artist is able to grasp the texture of feeling.

Eglė Kuckaitė creates her world of graphic arts as if by playing: arranging the prints that she has created herself or drawing naughty girls, which we identify as the artist’s alter ego. These are not beautiful Barbie dolls, but Pippi Longstockings creating the story of their lives, who can even conquer an angel. Sometimes the bravery of Kuckaitė’s drawings intertwines with the aesthetics of Japanese prints: there is a lot of empty space here and spontaneously born forms. The artist as if returns to the times of cave painting: she often creates monumental drawings directly on the white wall. Yet these drawings are made from many prints produced by her; their erotic and comical motifs contrast with the monumentality of images.

Laisvydė Šalčiūtė is one of the most colourful Lithuanian graphic artists both in the literal and the figurative sense. Her works are painterly not only due to many colours, but also due to the character of her touch: her lines rather remind of free painterly brush strokes than precise strokes of a chisel. Šalčiūtė creates a city of women whose inhabitants perceive the erotic fantasies of men with irony. The latter are given artificial smiles and hearts and women enjoy their imperfect bodies. In free time they create colourful mandalas, draw circles and spirals. And sometimes they even spray graffiti.

Lida Dubauskienė sees the world differently. She notices tiniest details where there seems to be nothing. And sometimes from that imperceptible ‘nothing’ she creates an astonishingly monumental composition: like that multifaceted house from match boxes. The poetics of empty space is not alien to Dubauskienė, and every stroke finds a precise place in her works.

It seems that Birutė Zokaitytė and Tatjana Diščenko live in an endless fairy tale. Perhaps, Zokaitytė’s tale is more corporeal, and Tatjana’s is rather reminiscent of a Renaissance dream. Zokaitytė’s characters are not afraid of touching and can even do a massage, and in Diščenko’s world angles are as real as they used to be to old masters. Birutė is ironic and sometimes specific almost in a medical way, and Tatjana tries to capture an illusion: like that ship she has dreamed off navigating between chequered curtains. Both artists travel to unknown lands, but Zokaitytė steps on the coast, and Tatjana observes the landscape floating by from her boat.

From works by Danutė Gražienė one can understand that white colour is no less important in graphic arts as black. White paper on which reliefs have been printed looks solemn and fragile, like snow that has just fallen. The poetic spirit of Gražienė’s works is also familiar to Nijolė Šaltenytė, only here the white abstract space is replaced by an interior with a tea set. However, Šaltenytė can by no means be called ‘domestic’: tea drinking and flying people rather point to the spiritual and not physical community. A similar feeling forms when looking at works by Neringa Žukauskaitė and Ilona Kukenytė. Generalised characters appearing in their works are followed by birds and cats: a kind of intermediaries between the heavenly and earthly spheres.

The connection between fantasy and concrete details are characteristic also to Eglė Babilaitė, Jūratė Rekevičiūtė and Vitalis Čepkauskas – without them this confrontation of diverse works of art would loose some playfulness. These artists perform complex transformations of environment by not suppressing, but freeing voices hidden in things.  

curator