KAUNAS PICTURE GALLERY / KAUNO PAVEIKSLŲ GALERIJA

05 09 2024 – 27 10 2024

The Vilnius Painting Triennial is an international event with deep traditions, held every three years since 1969. This year's triennial places special emphasis on the Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark), the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), and Poland. These are the countries whose artists are perhaps the quickest to respond to events happening around us and across the world.

The overall tone of the triennial is focused on the latest and most innovative trends in painting, aiming to understand and conceptualize the "contemporaneity" of modern painting, and to showcase the diversity and evolution of artistic reflections within the medium of painting. This triennial raises the question: Can painting, as a medium, fulfill the purpose of art—to encourage critical thinking, to enlighten, and to educate?

The collections of artists from the Nordic countries, Poland, and Lithuania are exhibited at the M.K. Čiurlionis Museum's Kaunas Picture Gallery.

Vilniaus tapybos trienalė yra tarptautinis renginys su giliomis tradicijomis, vykstantis kas trejus metus nuo 1969-ųjų. Šių metų trienalėje ypatingas dėmesys skiriamas Šiaurės šalims (Švedija, Suomija, Norvegija, Danija), Baltijos šalims (Estija, Latvija, Lietuva) ir Lenkijai. Tai šalys, kurių menininkai bene greičiausiai reaguoja į aplink mus ir visame pasaulyje vykstančius įvykius.

Bendras trienalės tonas sutelktas į naujausias ir novatoriškiausias tapybos tendencijas, siekiant suvokti ir konceptualizuoti šiuolaikinės tapybos „dabartiškumą“, parodyti tapybos medijos meninių refleksijų įvairovę ir kismą. Ši trienalė kelia klausimą: ar tapyba, kaip medija, įgali atlikti meno paskirtį - skatinti kritinį mąstymą, šviesti ir edukuoti?

Šiaurės šalių, Lenkijos ir Lietuvos menininkų kolekcijos, eksponuojamos M.K. Čiurlionio muziejaus Kauno paveikslų galerijoje.

Curators / kuratoriai: assoc. prof. Meda Norbutaitė (LT), prof. Henrik Bjørn Andersen (DK), Krzysztof Stanislawski (PL), Arvydas Žalpys (LT)

NORDIC ARTISTS

TAMARA PIILOLA

Helsinki, Finland

My subject area is classical. The paintings are carefully painted through and full of variations of light and shadow. Landscape and references to photography are characteristic of them. Landscape and plant subjects offer a challenge in terms of both form and color, as both have long traditions in the history of painting.

JUKKA RUSANEN

Lahti, Finland

My artwork is about the relationship between different parts that relate to each other: About how things influence each other and create a whole, how inner references in a painting become visible.

DAG ERIK ELGIN

Oslo, Norway

Perhaps as a consequence of painting’s loss of its privileged position, the idea of gaining perfection through rehearsing painterly scales has fallen into disrepute. „Originals“ address the denial of losing oneself in unknown material, and the subsequent longing for – physically – to take in, to be overwhelmed by the pre-existing images of one’s forerunners.

ILIJA WYLLER

Oslo, Norway

My artistic practice is about landscapes, both as theme and form. A landscape as a milieu that consists of both living and seemingly non-living objects that have varying temporalities. Albeit they all relate to one another, reciprocating or rejecting each other by chance, or in unison. All being entwined via the relations that are built, hence the experiences that are formed and shared during their respective lifespans.

ERIK JEOR

Stockholm, Sweden

Erik Jeor's painting "floats in a space or submarine world, between form and formlessness, body and landscape, abstract sign and figure," writes art critic Peter Cornell. Jeor's preferred technique is watercolour on paper and it is based on the colour's own logic, gravity and physical weight. Images of internal or external landscapes appear, open to the viewer's own interpretation.

CHRISTINE ÖDLUND

Stockholm, Sweden

Christine Ödlund is a contemporary Swedish artist whose work combines hyperrealism and fantasy, often exploring the intersection between art and nature through the unique use of plant pigments. Her artistry is characterised by a deep curiosity and a mystical approach to her subjects.

IVAN ANDERSEN

Copenhagen, Denmark

My work revolves around visual translation. My pieces often begin with figuration, such as urban spaces or landscapes. I deconstruct and transform the existing spatial structure so that my works exist in a space between the figurative and the formally abstract. Using recognizable visual elements, I provide the viewer with an entry point and an expectation of legibility. However, I break down the visual data, causing understanding to be partially lost, and the viewer must fill in the missing pieces based on personal visual experiences.

TORBEN RIBE

Hobro, Denmark

My works are mostly cheap-looking and painterly, seeking the decorative and harmonious, but accidents, mediocrity and compromises keep dragging everything down, and the realities of ordinary life, slowly breaks through the work’s non-figurative skin like a cancerous tumour or a slow water damage, oozing day and night, without one being able to do anything about it.

LITHUANIAN ARTISTS

DONATA MINDERYTĖ

Vilnius, Lithuania

My paintings often intertwine personal experiences and cultural references, subjective observations or life events and movie quotes and echoes from the history of painting. I'm trying to look at what is beautiful without irony, to look at the surrounding environment without prejudices, to identify with the characters of the supposed film and to look with an open eye as if all over again for the first time to look at the clichés of human relationships, social gender roles.

STASYS EIDRIGEVIČIUS

Warsaw, Poland

Stasys created unique art genres—masks and the so-called "sorrows" (smutki). The main themes of his work are human loneliness, alienation, sadness, and contemplation. His artistic expression is characterized by elements of grotesque, paradox, and absurdity, while imbuing realistic motifs with metaphysical qualities. His work strongly reflects memories of his homeland, childhood impressions, and the ethnographic realities of the Lithuanian countryside.

VYGANTAS PAUKŠTĖ

Vilnius, Lithuania

In Paukštė's works, the relationships between man and woman, human and nature, nature and culture are explored, revealing a mythologized structure of the world. The ritualistic nature of everyday actions is emphasized, and they are given symbolic meaning. Her work is characterized by fragmented compositions, a loose, sketch-like painting style, silhouette-like drawings, a primitivist approach to figures, and subtle color combinations. Poeticism and irony are strongly evident.

HENRIKAS ČERAPAS

Vilnius, Lithuania

If you ask what I painted, I answer - I painted paint.
In other words, I paint the question of what do I paint.

EGLĖ ULČICKAITĖ

Vilnius, Lithuania

In my work, I delved into the themes of memory, time and the experience of reality. What I seek in objects and images marked by time is not just an attempt to understand how we experience fragments of our cultural context, but also to approach questions about the very structure of reality, including the problem of painting, by starting from the experience of such specifically marked objects or local issues.

JONAS GASIŪNAS

Vilnius, Lithuania

In the paintings, eclectic and contradictory images are combined (as if borrowed from the media), mass culture images are reinterpreted, their stereotypical meanings are challenged, allusions to historical events also appear in Gasiūnas repertoir.

EGLĖ KARPAVIČIŪTĖ

Vilnius, Lithuania

In my creative work, I view the painted image through the prism of the concept of painting retrospectivism, which serves as a tool for exploring and analyzing my personal relationship with painting. I shape my understanding of painting retrospectivism by touching upon the critical moments of painting's existence, history, and development, or the existential transformations of painting, where the stagnation in the evolution of painting's expressive form was expressed.

POLISH ARTISTS

MARTYNA CZECH

Katowice, Poland

Czech’s paintings become a space for working through the relationships between the artist and others. She is interested in intense feelings: love, hatred, revenge, humiliation, submission, resistance, and pain, as well as death. The characters she presents not take on ambiguous moral roles and attitudes, obfuscating the interpretation of the above categories and making ethical judgments.

MARTYNA BOROWIECKA

Krakow and Wieliczka, Poland

In my latest works, I focus on symbols that are signs that convey a narrative. As a painter, I can create stories and visions, and finally lead you with images across the horizon of my imagination. I base my work on paper collages which they make as references for painting interpretation. I try to create fantastic compositions while remembering about the timeless canons existing in old art. I want to be your guide, shall you start this journey with me?