The works in the exhibition have been created over the last three years, although one of them, Sailing Away, dates back to 1997. The painting, which has been hanging above the artist’s bed for many years, is presented here as an introduction, a point of departure in Jusionis’s work and its evolution.
Repetition and change are both important for the artist. Motifs, construction, characters, formats of paintings are repeated, but the colour relationships change. The dominance of blue is replaced by red, and red by magenta, violet and yellow. The same characters, animal-human figures move in a circle, until all life disappears in the obscurity of the paintings.
The works on show are inspired by different cultural, memory and experience layers – from Homer’s Odyssey, the Arabic tale of Sinbad the Sailor, to Ernest Hemingway’s posing with his catch of predatory fish, or Jan Vermeer’s reflective Dutch interiors. In the exhibition, each painting stands on its own and together they offer a common field of perception.
“I hope that the works on display will give the viewer the freedom of feeling, of perception, and encourage their own interpretations. I want the totality of the exhibited paintings to create a suggestive, emotionally influential space, in which the figures of various characters, or their absence, coexist in an imaginary space,” says Vidmantas Jusionis.
Organiser: Pamėnkalnio Gallery.
Sponsors: Lithuanian Council for Culture, Lithuanian Artists’ Association.
The exhibition is part of the programme of the 90th anniversary of the Lithuanian Artists’ Association.
