XI YPP Book

Patrons:
Mindaugas Raila, the family of Nicolas Ortiz, Dali Van Rooij Rakutyte,
Lewben Art Foundation and Bajorunas/Sarnoff Foundation
Young Painter Prize 2019
Editor: Julija Dailidėnaitė
Translation: Tomas Čiučelis
Design: Toma Brundzaitė / www.brunto.lt
YPP organizer: VšĮ Šiuolaikiniai meno projektai
Sponsors:

07 The Young Painter Prize Competition
Brings Painters from Across the Baltic States
09 XI YPP Jury
13 Finalists
Content
55 XI YPP Winner
57 Interview with XI YPP Winner
29 Articles
60 About Painting and Becoming
64 Young Artists meet institutions: some important transformations
68 You can only sink in quicksand to your shoulders
73 About the portrait of the young painter once again
76 Brackets, question - marks and exclamations marks
80 Young in Latvia
86 About the street
90 A few remarks and anecdotes about contemporary painting
94 The subjunctive sexual mood blossoms allegedly
98 I Can’t - But We Can
102 Welcome to the Dollhouse: On Painting and Perspective
108 Today painting media are more visible than ever
110 Changes in the Everyday practices in the Estonian Art Scene
04
114 A decade of young art
120 Where do you go to, my lovely

The Young
It is the eleventh time when the annual Young Painter Prize project, an art chronicler of the young
generation of painters, become a platform for the up-and-coming artists from Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia. The opening of the exhibition showcasing the works of the finalists of the XI YPP
competition was held in Vilnius on 8 November. The event was also feature the announcement of
this year’s YPP winner.
Painter Prize
Competition
Brings Painters
from Across
This year the artists competed for the award, worth 5,000 EUR, which includes a two month
residency in SomoS Art House, Berlin, a cash prize, and an opportunity to hold a solo show in
“Pamėnkalnio” Gallery, Vilnius. One of the highlights of the YPP award is that the winner’s work
was included into the art collections of the Lithuanian Art Museum and National Art Gallery which
are the possessors of the artworks of the previous ten YPP winners.
As a continuation of the last year’s initiative, friends of YPP—the creative communications agency
“Autoriai” and the contemporary art gallery “The Rooster”—introduced their own additional
prizes. The “Autoriai” agency—a close collaborator with the artists of the Baltic region—offered a
“Special mention” cash prize. The winner of the prize was selected by the dedicated interdisciplinary
jury. One of the finalists also received “The Rooster Open”, an encouragement award from
the “Rooster” gallery which works exclusively with the up-and-coming young artists.
The key objectives of YPP are to introduce the work of the young artists to a wider audience, and
help specialist audiences in Lithuania and abroad, which include art collectors, art managers and
curators, discover new talents of the Baltic region. To ensure the successful realisation of these
goals each year, the YPP organisers host an international jury comprised of a diverse range of art
professionals: gallerists, collectors, art theorists, artists, and curators.
the Baltic
States
When asked how it feels to be organising the YPP competition for the eleventh time already, the
art historian Julija Dailidėnaitė could not contain her joy: “Actually, this annual project marks the
beginning of my ‘calendar year’. It is shocking to realise that we started a decade ago. Sometimes
it seems like we are looped in a single moment, but it is very reassuring to look back and summarise
all the discoveries, achievements and events that accumulated over the years. I still see
the potential in developing and expanding our project further.”
The project initiator, painter Vilmantas Marcinkevičius added: “What I find especially rewarding is
the realisation that creativity is more real than the idea of a perpetual motion engine. Creativity
is limitless. This is clearly evident in the work of the young generation. The young artists of the
Baltic states use the means of painting to navigate a whole variety of paths, and yet we see a tendency
to return to the figurative painting that reflects on the existential states and experiences,
living environments and situations, the influence of animation and computer games, as well as
the art history itself. These are all very positive signs of the future of painting.”

XI
YPP
Jury:
08
Vilius
Kavaliauskas
(1978) – contemporary art patron, collector,
initiator and Chairman of the Board of two
art foundations – Lewben Art Foundation and
Lithuanian Expatriate Art Foundation, has a
representative collection of Lithuanian and international
art dating from the end of the 18th
century to the present day.
Vilius Kavaliauskas not only collects art, but
also makes donations to state institutions –
since 2013 he has made donations to the Lithuanian
Art Museum, M. K. Čiurlionis National
Museum of Art and the Vilna Gaon State Jewish
Museum. In addition, Mr Kavaliauskas is an
ardent supporter of both exhibitions of contemporary
art institutions such as the Contemporary
Art Centre, the National Gallery of Art,
Vartai Gallery, the center for art and education
Rupert, and projects such as the international
contemporary art fair ArtVilnius and Vilnius
City Opera. In recent years Vilius Kavaliauskas
has supported young artists, by contributing to
the Young Painter Prize project. Over the period
from 2010 to 2019 Vilius Kavaliauskas has
been the patron of close to twenty exhibitions
and over ten publishing projects.
Since 2014 he has been a member of the Russia
and Eastern Europe Acquisitions Committee
(REEAC) at the TATE museum in the United
Kingdom. Members of REEAC work alongside
the TATE curatorial team to frame the collecting
strategy.
Maarit Murka
(1981) is a hyperrealist who comes from the
younger Estonian contemporary artists generation.
The themes for Murka’s works come from
life itself: urban living, collective histories, the
everyday and the political climate. Murka has
also contributed for the analyse of war zones
and the life of soldiers in Afghanistan. However
in other works Murka draws back from social
criticism and instead dives into the human psyche,
considering its essences through study of
the Freudian subconscious. It is through explorations
among this range of different subjects,
while remaining true to hyperrealism in style,
that Murka has painted herself into the history
of Estonian contemporary art.

Paulus Fugers
is active as visual artist since 1981, as curator
since 1999. He is founder/director of SomoS
Art House, Berlin. In his art, he applies a project-based,
conceptual way of working. Much
of his work is based on extensive research
into the language of ornamentation and queer
themes, making use of techniques like painting,
installation, ceramics and light projection.
He has been active as curator, initiating and
producing projects since the post-wall era
of Berlin’s “temporary spaces,” that blurred
the lines between the visual arts and the music-
and club scenes. Since that time, he has
sought to independently produce his projects
that included an exhibition on the Iraq War, a
series of Craftism exhibitions, and a recycling
project during the Berliner Kunstsalon Art Fair.
Subsequently, from 2008-2011 he worked on a
program of international exhibitions in project
space “Kunstraum Richard Sorge” in a historic
former brewery in Berlin Friedrichshain, presenting
artists like Charles Craft, Nava Lubelski,
Jn.Ulrick Desért, Hiroki Otsuka and Mumbleboy.
In 2012 he co-founded SomoS, where he
organizes exhibitions and Artist in Residence
Program.
10
Šelda Puķīte
(b. 1986) - Latvian freelance art critic, curator
and researcher living in Estonia. She has studied
art history in Art Academy of Latvia receiving
both Bachelor and Master degree and
now is continuing her doctoral studies preparing
dissertation about pop art influences in
Latvian art. Šeldas special interest is projects
which examines the contact-points between
sociopolitical issues, mass culture and art executed
through interdisciplinary research and
whimsical presentation. For the last years she
has been working on several important exhibition
projects, curating educational programs
and creating catalogues for art festivals, as well
as participating both in local and international
discussion boards, symposiums and lectures
and writing reviews and essays for Baltic press
and publications. Šelda has collaborated with
such institutions as Latvian National Museum
of Art, Latvian Center for Contemporary Art,
Riga Photography Biennale, Tartu Art House
and Tartu Art Museum.
Arūnas Gelūnas
(1968) – head the Lithuanian Art Museum,
Doctor of Humanities. From 2012 until 2016,
A. Gelūnas was an Ambassador of Permanent
Delegation of the Republic of Lithuania to
UNESCO and from 2010 until 2012 - a Minister
of Culture. A. Gelūnas studied printmaking and
graphic art at the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VAA)
and Japanese painting (Nihonga) at the Tokyo
University of the Arts (Tokyo Geidai), has held
exhibitions of his prints and paintings in Lithuania,
France, Japan and other countries around
the world, and has been awarded various prizes
for printmaking and book design.
After defending his doctoral thesis at the Vytautas
Magnus University in 2001, he became
more seriously invested in philosophy and art
theory, taught printmaking, ink painting and
calligraphy, art theory and philosophy at the
VAA and other universities in Lithuania. He has
contributed to the creation of the Lithuanian
Association of Creative and Culture Industries,
was the first chairperson of its board, and it
was during his tenure as the minister of culture
that the foundation for the Lithuanian Council
for Culture was laid and the Lithuanian Film
Centre was founded. In 2013, A. Gelūnas was
named an honorary doctor of the Aalto University
(Finland).

F
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T
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Adomas Storpirštis
Alvīne Bautra
Arnolds Andersons
Augustė Santockytė
Aurelija Bernataitė
Dovilė Bagdonaitė
Eglė Norkutė
Gytis Arošius
Ieva Kampe-Krumholca
Ingrida Bagdonaitė
Jegors Buimisters
Kristen Rästas
Raminta Blaževičiūtė
Rasa Deveikytė
Rūta Matulevičiūtė
Sabīne Vernere
Samanta Augutė
Sandra Strēle
Siiri Jüris
Tadas Tručilauskas

Adomas Storpirštis / LT
Harvester 3000. 200x100cm, new media & computer graphics. 2019
Detox Extremism came into existence sometime around in 2020. It was forbidden to use any type
of pleasure stimulant - those who’d use alcohol, drugs and have sex, would be sent to concentration
camps, created by a company named as “Harvester 3000”. Minor relaxation activity - like
drinking a non-alcoholic beer and masturbating privately would leave a person with a financial
penalty. Users of alcohol and drugs (Power Hedonists) would be closed in so-called “overcharged
detox camps”. Using the prisoners as human machines, Harvester 3000 would convert detox
slime into powerful pharmaceuticals which would appear as lollipops. These lollipop pharmaceuticals
would be delivered to aristocrats who’d accelerate their immortality via this drug.
14

Alvīne Bautra / LV
Between the presence and absence. 130x200cm, oil on canvas. 2018
Presence and absence can be seen both temporally and physically, as well as spiritually. Through
our body, its’ materiality and movement that is seen by everyone, consciousness is realized,
however small these movements may be. The composition of the painting embody the feeling of
the movement in slow motion which is metaphor of the diverse and multi-layered human nature
and the uncertainty of being. The engagement of the elusive inner world with thoughts and
emotions which are not known to others. However, in order to exist, a person needs a body and it
is seen by everyone.

Arnolds Andersons / LV
Modest. 100x100cm, acrylic on canvas. 2018
These five paintings are part of my last solo exhibition ‘Disappear here’ which took place in London,
UK. The concept of ‘Disappear here’ is not about the here or the now, it’s about the void and
the endless possibilities. When all appears absent, all can be found.
What’s in focus – not a lot, but it’s this accidental nihilism, a place seemingly stripped of possibilities,
which ironically is the place where almost anything could happen.
A pause, a gap, a space – that inbetween time where you allow yourself to be lost and open to
the unexpected. That fleeting moment of neutrality that predicates a happening or a step towards
who you are.
‘Disappear here’ is about the fogginess of the mind – to look and look again. Where there’s nothing,
there’s everything.
18

Augustė Santockytė / LT
The other side. 90 x 70 cm, acrylic on canvas. 2019
This painting is a depiction of the confrontation of material, cultural and spiritual life.OVER
CHAOS. Up there, where there is silence in black and dark. The circular blue thing hanging somewhere
in the dark universe is full of noise, sounds, action ... axioms that are acceptable to most.
A supposed order that helps survive in the blue bubble. The painting depicts a soul longing for
that chaos, but it can only feel the cries of its loved ones - the souls - on the “other side”. It is
said that the soul is concentrated in the human heart. Souls feel for each other. Cultural quotations
sculpturally depict the soul, the immortal part of man, the creator of the earth, the blue
planet.
The painting is born of many sketches, dreams, memories.
I use personal experiences, existential questions, experiences, reflections, feelings, loss. Intangible
(soul) life in the material world as a starting point in my creation. The details are very important
in the piece. Every detail and immediacy ‘mastering’ of the object is important. I create objects
and forms with a realistic - hyperrealistic stroke. Objects so depicted are like readable text,
speaking to the viewer.

Aurelija Bernataitė / LT
No artificial flowers bloom there anymore. 120×60cm, oil on canvas. 2019
With my paintings, I would like to awaken beautiful memories for the viewer, make them feel like
children again and remember the places where they spent their childhoods, their grandparents. I
want to show them my Belarusian village (my grandparents lived there, my father grew up there
and I spent a lot of time there as a child).
Of course, the village they will see will be my interpretation. Also, since I am painting a disapearing
village, I am trying to transfer the spirit of that place into the medium of painting/fine ars,
into the environment where I live / study (Vilnius, the art scene).
For me, Belarus is very close as a memory, but in reality I rarely visit it and it is unrelated to my
daily routine anymore. I create these images as scenography for myself. Naturally the form of the
paintings is stylized, conveyed through essential characteristic features (bright colors, especially
specific Belarusian bright blue color, carpets on the walls, etc.). With certain accents, I try to
show the peculiarities of that place.
22

Dovilė Bagdonaitė / LT
I went to E.Schiele’s exhibition and after that I wanted to paint myself the way he painted
himself. 32x24cm, gouache on 300 g/m2 paper. 2019
I went to E.Schiele’s exhibition and after that I wanted to paint myself the way he painted
himself.

Eglė Norkutė / LT
Art and Collectibles. Oil on canvas, varios forms. 7-50cm variable sizes, installation. 2019
According to Walter benjamin, cultural and religious objects or works of art that enter museums
lose their aura once pulled out of their initial context. I feel as if I was performing a similar action
when cutting my motifs out of my paintings. Admiring the metamorphosis of the status of a real
thing into a work of art, and by tearing it out of its original context into an object to be explored
and exhibited, a museum exhibit, I allow myself to re-enter the vicious circle of transformation
when painting newly arranged exhibitions. Passed through a chain of transformations observed
image is once again an object, an artifact – a thing. It seems that by removing painted motifs
from the borders of the square of a picture, they pretend to be more of their own foremost
images. Artisanally rendered images become a kind of anti-ready-made objects. When creating
these moulages embodied in materials that belong to painting medium, I consider issues of
authorship, originality and status of an artwork.
26

Gytis Arošius / LT
5G.180 x 130cm, oil on canvas. 2019
Brutal architecture, industrial building constructions and militaristic transport are the main
aspects that dominate in my creative activity. These things symbolize the fear of upcoming bad
things and disastrous consequences, in addition, it encourages to consider the impact of technologies
for human daily life, the future and the consequences of progress.
Brutalism spreads grotesque energy, it’s like a monument of power, which could basically withstand
everything, while being harsh and unacceptable. As well it is the symbol of industrialism
where functionality is a top priority.
Nowadays, it is not uncommon for people to think about their future and become anxious. These
feelings may interfere with daily routine and even lead to paranoia. Feeling worried all the time
makes you confused, insecure and helpless. Uncertainty about the future and paranoia makes
imagination picture the things which do not exist. Moreover, the experience of the previous generations
intensifies those feelings.
I construct my paintings using my own photographs, as I adjust them by inserting a non-existing
object created by own imagination or by using historic military transport of the Cold War. People
may recognize their own thoughts and feelings while looking into my paintings and get comfort
by learning that these fears are more common to human race than it is an individual experience.
The materialisation of those feelings into the piece of art might encourage to see the situation
from the different angle and evaluate to which extent these fears are rational.

Ieva Kampe-Krumholca / LV
We all come from one tree. 80x120cm, oil on canvas. 2019
This artwork, just as all my other botanical theme paintings, is a symbolic family relation depiction.
I am keen on finding symbolic family member situation similarities in nature’s forms- how
plant character tells stories so similar to human relationships. This particular painting speaks
about peculiar feeling where you feel most lonely while being with your family members- even
though we “come from one tree” we tend to go to opposite directions and lose our connection
spots. Some of us tend to look “taller/higher” than others, some of us already has some broken
leaves. The branch (bloodline) keeps us together, jet we are so different and tend to move away
from each other.
30

Ingrida Bagdonaitė / LT
Gathering. Dyptic 232x129cm, charcoal on canvas. 2019
My work explores the society where self-image is overloaded and overrepresented I’m
interested in disconnection and abandonment of individual through spaces that are cultural,
institutional and discursive, that are somehow ‘other’: disturbing, intense, incompatible,
contradictory or transforming. Places that have more meaning then the eye meets from the first
glimpse, spaces that somehow are transitory or are empowering the spectator by being
connected to others- heterotopias.

Jegors Buimisters / LV
The violent bear it away. 120x190cm, acrylics on canvas. 2019
“The Violent Bear It Away” is a painting that attempts to depict a fugitive moment of apocalyptic
transgression that separates profane and sacred world. It is created as a reaction on the contemporary
situation in which, as said by German philosopher Dietmar Kamper, after several millennia
of mankind’s pacification we have to state an unexpectedly strong surge of violence on earth.
Everything changes, flows and exists in continuous movement, however, for the artist it is important
to depict the moment in which daily violence becomes transgressive, sacred violence.
Deeply rooted in the philosophy of George Bataille and Rene Girard, this artwork draws
references from both classic art and modern history, quoting Karl Brullov’s “Last Day of Pompei”
together with the execution of Nguyen Văn Lém, and puts Leon Bakst’s “Terror Antiquus”
in the same composition with photos of Robert Capa. Through such juxtaposition, the painting
comment on the situation of the perpetual and yet ever momentary brutality of life — however,
attempting to symbolically open up and trace a transgressive path out of this situation.
Both shocking and awe-inspiring, “The Violent Bear It Away” combines figurative and abstract
motifs into a powerful composition that catches a single moment in the constant eschatological
race of people, images and forms.
34

Kristen Rästas / EE
Over the hills. Hills over. 90x320cm, painting installation. Two panels, oil on canvas, Yoga
matts. 2018
“Over the hills. Hills over” is an author’s signature style painting installation. The two piece
panorama painting depicts an unrealistic and vague landscape. The curled up yoga matts are
trying to find a comfy space in the physical room. The work got influenced by commercial advertisements
and nature photographs that involve travelling and tourism. These images paint the
viewer pictures of unimaginable fantasy lands that must get visited at least once in a lifetime.
This work has previously been displayed at a group exhibition “Home and Away”, which took
place at Viljandi City gallery in Viljandi, Estonia in 2018.

Raminta Blaževičiūtė / LT
Madonna and the Child. The first Trip. 130x200cm, oil on canvas. 2019
Madonna and Child. A first Trip.
...
- As I began painting this piece, it changed three times. The first two were about a prince who
was looking for his princess.
- And the third one turned into a piece about a princess and prince?
- Something like that. As soon as I finished painting it, I realized that it is, in fact, Madonna and
the King. A real sacred painting. Not the usual today‘s saints, they don‘t even look like saints. Even
suspiciously happy, bravely accepting their vividness, otherness, extravagant and humorous, just
like real comedians. But I find the effect of the painting a bit bizarre, maybe therapeutic even?
So be cautious while looking at them – the pieces may revive you and fulfill all of your dreams.
I‘ve tried it already.
38

Rasa Deveikytė / LT
Honey, I’m home. 140x150cm, acrylic, oil on canvas. 2019
The reality itself is a problematic sphere because of the complicated understanding of concept
and manifestation of different truths concerning it. The uncertainty of reality begins then we
face simulation of reality or reality fiction which can remove the clear border where one ends
and the other begins. Jean Baudrillard suggests the term hyperreality, which describes virtual
reality becoming more real than physical reality which is, in fact, the original one. This is an issue
which I am personally interested in and the essential context is the cult of the image - sequential,
strategic construction of image and prestige on social media. I will submit a hypothetical
example which is originated from stereotypical analogues noticeable in social media. For example:
consumer traveler is absolutely joyful by sharing his pictures from “all inclusive” holiday
in Pula which are mainly the pictures of pina colada cocktails and stunning tanned bodies near
the Adriatic sea. But there is no doubt that the storyline will not reveal to us how romance in the
hotel can be turned into a nightmare when disagree about the perfect evening movie emerges.
Still, the perfect image can make the viewer feel stuck in everyday life and so, the pleasures he
does not experience at the moment can become a big issue. Yet, not the criticising exact stereotypes
and situations is the marrow, but the gap between reality and facadic (un)reality which can
turn situations into comic ones. I oppose the impozant cult of image by emphasizing everyday
life situations as pure reality, which is distinguished from simulating self’s presentation on social
media.

Rūta Matulevičiūtė / LT
The Read. 170x100cm, oil on linen. 2019
This artwork is a part of on-going series, an artistic reseach focusing on the relations between
human and the environment. The figures in painting are placed in urban or natural organic environment
with the hypothesis of these two components being indivisible, which is based on the
ancient philosophy sources and finding similarities with the contemporary theories and daily
existence in urban, glam and popculture. In my artistic practice I focus on the fundamental questions
on existence, looking through the eyes of a today‘s human being.
The creation process of painting is executed in several phases, when I use the synthesis of
various media. This synthesis makes painting an interdisciplinary creation, in this way the boundaries
between the pure painting, performance art, photography, digital and internet art, etc. are
dissolved. Such manner of the practice is based on the holistic philosophy suggesting the all
inclusive oneness. The dissolving view, glimmering light in the painting‘s motive are both a hint
to the digital screen and the environment being created by the figure in painting and
creating that pictured figure as well, as equals.
42

Sabīne Vernere / LV
UN-touch / NOT-touch. 50x60cm, acrilyc, indian ink, airbrush & paper on canvas. 2019
Some time ago i found a wonderful text on internet about why roses have thorns: “Roses happen
to be beautiful to look at, fragrant to smell, and sweet to taste. All of that would most likely
attract all sorts of creatures great and small, right? Right! So, all of these di erently sized creatures
would obviously be going up to the roses and looking at them, smelling them, and tasting
them. All of that would be pretty rough on the rose, wouldn’t it? That’s where the thorns come”
This text, written so simply by someone over-enthusiastic made me very inspired. I saw so many
similarities to human attitudes and relationships that I decided to explore this matter. It was so
simple for somebody to decribe it for roses but when it comes to people it somehow gets very
complexed.
UN-touch/NOT-touch is a series of work about accidentally (or maybe not?) asking for unwanted
touches. This particular work is about the game of a ection, flirting and mingling with potential
partners, that goes terribly wrong, because the main character has prepared itself to be very desired
by one particular victim, but did not give a thought (or maybe did?) that its looks are inviting
everybody. And now there is an inside battle of pride, curiousity, sadness, fear and unrealistic
expectations.
Painting is made using various materials. Background is raw, thick white layer of paint, even like
sand paper as a reference to inconvenient situation. The figure that reminds something like a
branch of a tree and human figure on its knees is made by indian ink. Its body almost fades away
in the light and goes out of the canvases, reminding of how never ending this ritual of finding a
partner is in nature. Black airbrush spray is the symbol of unwanted touch. It is faded, not firm
and concrete because it is only an idea, a potentiality, maybe even just a gaze from somebody or
invisible sexual energy that nobody can see and describe but can always feel in the air. The last
component is attached papper. With the di erent material I want to show that it is movement of
thought, happening on di erent level - figures mind - as a devious thougth of taking the touch,
the curiousity of having, expierincing this unwanted touch for unknown (or maybe known?) reasons.
All my artistic practise is based on investigating nature of human being. Comparing and interpreting
the forms of human body to nature, looking for simlar forms of expression. It challenges
the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and
‘civilized’ selves. Sex is mostly the medium I use to bring out the story line, but it is never the
final message.

Samanta Augutė / LT
Thank God (who is unhappy, is unwise). 30x25cm, oil on cancas, collage, sewing. 2019
Often I question myself if the path that I’ve chosen fits me. I am constantly looking for answers to
main questions of being. If I find those answers I become joyful. I protect the truth that I descover
and try to live accoridingly. Even if time passes and I start seeing that thruth in a different light,
or even loose it, I naively believe that there is a right path and a right destination. I love collecting
inspiring quotes and proverbs. I use them for self encouragement and cultivation. “Who is
unhappy, is unwise” part of the title came from an old lithuanian proverb “A person who is unhappy
is usually considered for an unwise one.” This statement apeared to me as very unfamiliar
and even radical but I could not deny it’s truth.
46

Sandra Strēle / LV
Nostalgia. 200x405cm, canvas / mixed media. 2019
I REMEMBER MY PREVIOS EXHIBITION.
IT WAS IN JURMALA.
ITS TITLE WAS MELANCHOLY.
AS TIME CONTINUES PASSING BY
MORE AND MORE I AM WILLING TO
RETURN TO MOMENTS
WHEN SOMETHING ARTISTICALLY NEW WAS DISCOVERED.
MELANCHOLY FOR ME WAS OF THAT KIND.
IF PAINTING DIES.
I DO NOT BELIEVE IN IT.
IT HAS TO OCCUPY A ROLE
IN THE TRAGEDY OF FUTURE ART. NEW PROFFESIONS ARE TO SHOW UP.
AND ONE OF THEM WILL BE
A NOSTALGIST.
Painting from the serie “NOSTALGIA” depicts a new possibility of making exhibitions and
developing different ideas. Creating a concept for an exhibition I constantly end up with having
many possible ideas and visualities. For artist it is always a complicated choice what to
develop, what to consider for future artworks and what to forget. I am not sure if it is a tragedy
of the painting itself or the fortune that during a lifetime the quantity of artworks made by one
author is limited. This painting shows how to make an exhibition without a real exhibition space
or create multiple exhibitions within one. And this method also allows to adjust the exhibition
space to the artworks imagined.

Siiri Jüris / EE
Touch III. 170x130cm, acrylic on canvas. 2019
For the past two years I have been studying and looking into the relationship between a patient
(with limited mobility) and a caregiver, focusing on the care aspect and on the physical contact.
Work samples presented for this competition are on that subject. How does a person feel when
their body has turned into a prison, which cannot even feel the most immediate human contact?
Who helps the (compassionate; empathic) helper with their emotional distress? The paintings
are based on the ergonomic principles taught to caretakers, which have been purposefully taken
out of their medical context. That makes the visible more ambiguous. The portrayed touch is not
only intimate, but also is almost intrusive, overstepping the autonomy of the person, and possibly
carried out without consent. Therefore, something warm and intimate can simultaneously
feel cold and calculated. Materiality is unavoidable - at some point we are all helpless and depend
on others. One moment matter snaps and gives in. Despite all the above, people continue
the search for physical closeness, each other’s touch.
50

Tadas Tručilauskas / LT
Sip sis sip on this melted ice that I brought from the top of the Alps. Diptych 180x205cm, oil on
canvas. 2019
Sip sis sip on this melted ice that I brought from the top of the Alps is a painting series right now
limited to 100 paintings. There will be more in the future. My idea is to study this pose and make
a sculpture and then paintings from different angles. These paintings function as a helping hand
from the Great Spirit. The narative of the painting goes like this. I woke up in the morning and
decided to go to the alps there I put some snow into my diamond glass. Later I came back home
and my two sisters were having a morning swim. I gave them to taste the melting snow. They
were pleased. As I was looking from the pool of where I exist in the milky way. I was able to see
them to beings not of human nature looking at me in the pool of all existence. I was pleased. In
that reality of Earth the snow which I handed them was purely extremely clean. Because in that
Earth there is no pollution and things are just created through sheer thought power. For example
I would need a watch so I would have to imagine every part of the mechanism, it would later appear
before me. For me to wear this creation of my own mind which now I can wear on my hand
and with functions only my mind is capable of imagining. These paintings serve a function of the
help from far far away beyond the human comprehension. Those two sisters are like angels, archangels
came here to our earth through the help of my hand. To help with the research of technology,
preserving wildlife and much more. This is the empire of Light. On them will I impose my
will the law of light. Artefact which later in life there is a possibilty for me to have is the diamond
glass from which hopefuly one day I will be able to drink the melting snow without any harmful
stuff in it only the purest of purest of mother nature.
Simbolicaly two sisters that can not meet on the mountain in Lithuanian folk literature is two
eyes, To live the ideal life first our eyes must see everything this way. Even if the day is shrouded
by someone screaming at us that we are worthless and stupid and we should better turn to God
to save our souls. This is nonsense to the one that knowes that everything was s.p.e.c.i.a.l and
perfect from the begining. I fone has a ideal vision. Then one day the children future generations
will be able to use even the worst circumstances to their own best advantage. Creating the infinite
engine. Which will serve everyone to infinitum posisbilities. You need to charge your car?
No problem it was charged before you even thought you needed to charge it.
What we do not even imagine today. With ideal vision things are possible to our future self.
Which is not so far away from the one you are now.
So sip sis sip upon this melted ice that I brought from the top of the alps.

WINNER
Sandra Strēle / LV
(Nostalgia. 200x405cm, canvas / mixed media. 2019)

Interview
with XI YPP Prize Winner Sandra Strēle / Latvia
Painting? Why?
Was there a pivotal moment when you decided to follow your path as an artist?
(how did this media appear on your creative road, why is it?)
For as long as I can remember, I have always had the desire to tell stories. For several hours every
night, my pa invented tales, thus developing my passion for creating different fictitious, illusory
subworlds. Every story I create now is a continuation of the previous one - like a series in which
its protagonists do not age, but experience new transformations. They are affected by time, predictions
of the future, or invented future scenarios, as well as reflection and devotion to memories
of the past.
I have studied mathematics, languages and literature until at the secondary school I understood
that painting is a way to interlink all my interests – painting has some aspects and principles of
mathematics, physics, as a form of information it is definitely very close to language and literature
possibilities.
Who inspires you?
What is your greatest indulgence in life? (personality, context, etc.)
The greatest inspiration I get is from my daily life and routine actions. I enjoy observing and
creating stories from my observations. I would say that every person whom I meet in my life
somehow impacts me. I try to collect stories and experiences of different people.
Main motive.
(Who are your most interested in your work?
What topics do you consider in your work)
In my creative work, I create large-scale installations based on classic painting - a series of paintings
that, in chronological order, advance from one story to another. I focus on creating and
interpreting secluded, alienated, sometimes lonely places, their architecture, and fictitious
everyday scenes, offering the viewer the role of an observer. The painted places and landscapes
in each series of paintings preserve some of their attributes from the previous one and simultaneously
offer the viewer to perceive the changes and transformations that have occurred. In
painting, I try to introduce cinema aesthetics, where frame replaces frame. In my work, painting
replaces painting, and they are all subject to a single time system, which is simultaneously
seemingly real and veritable, but at the same time abstract. Building on the idea of ​a holographic
universe, I try to merge the planes of the past, present, and future, but at the same time offer the
viewer small edges of reality that for a moment can be read off these points of overlap. There is
always a story or even an infinite set of stories among the serial paintings. What fascinates me
most in painting is this opportunity to create a large number of stories, stemming from one original
narrative.
Can you tell us about the process of making your work?
From what does it begin and when does your artwork “end”?
My large-scale installations, which are pursuing new ways of creating and developing narrative
painting, could be considered examples of expanded painting. To achieve complete and distinct
56
storylines that connect the installation’s paintings, I create artist’s books that contain small
textual fragments whose narrative connects them to one of the paintings. Expanded painting
as a field of contemporary painting research has been a source of attraction for me for a long
time. Addition of three-dimensional objects to paintings, either depicting them in paintings or
displaying them in the installation space, is a powerful method of narrating a story. Painting is a
very emotionally saturated medium, and in my opinion, it is always important for the viewer to
recognize something familiar in paintings. And reproducing painted objects or their replicas in a
three-dimensional plane and incorporating them in a single exposition with paintings ensures it.
I attach great importance to the size of the paintings. That is why I usually create large-scale
paintings that encourage the viewer to perceive painting as a physical experience. Painting is my
emotional, mental, and physical work, as well as a process of physical and spiritual enjoyment,
during which I must continually work, think, and care for my viewer.
It is very difficult to define the beginning or the “end” of the artwork. The process of making my
works I would describe as a compilation of intellectual and physical work that is predicted and
predefined from my former experiences, intellectual capacity and imagination. The process of
the production of an artwork starts when the exact amount of thoughts, spontaneous feelings,
emotions, practical experience and individual observations of the hole surrounding life coincide
in one point.
I believe that my work in a sense of an artwork starts when it is carried out of my studio and
shown to a wider public. In my opinion, the definition of an art object – an artwork – starts and
ends with the public. If the exhibited piece creates “a specific aura” for the public to feel, it can
be called an artwork. But the “auras” are different and sometimes difficult to capture and understand.
Do you have moments in your life when you have been keen on the chosen artist’s
path? Have you ever had a moment when you questioned your career entirely?
(if so, who then returned you? Stopped?)
I enjoy being an artist. Nowadays, when the high technologies are changing and improving so
rapidly, I would call artist a nostalgist of society. I believe that a profession of an artist will remain
in the future and that is pleasant to know that something you do now and enjoy doing will
not disappear because of technological achievements or different changes in the world. I have
heard that scientists predict that one of the new future professions would be a nostalgist that
creates home interiors from different time periods. Probably in some way that is also the future
of the future artists – continuation of being nostalgists of the society.
Are you interested in the art field of the Baltic region?
(write your opinion on the context of the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian artistic
field: differences, similarities, advantages, aspirations, etc.)
I believe that nowadays contemporary art can be described as plural. Artists can work everywhere
in the world even without being here or there physically. But I also consider that the
regional background or even the impact from growing up in an exact village, city or home plays a
role in the development of individuals personality.
Baltic region if we look at the map is comparatively small. In my opinion, the most significant
resource of the Baltic region are people and their intellectual and creative achievements and
abilities. So, I can say that I am definitely interested in the art field of the Baltic region and its
opportunities to grow and gain more impact in the international art field.
As an artist I would like to make a closer cooperation among artists from Latvia, Lithuania and
Estonia. In my opinion, it is a big advantage that we have a possibility to work and develop bigger
art projects together as a Baltic region. I do not think that there are any huge differences between
Latvian and Lithuanian art field, Lithuanian and Estonian art field or Latvian and Estonian
art field. There are possibly some differences in mentality, colouring, temper and impacts each of
three countries has historically had, but I would rather analyse concrete authors and artists more
than their affiliation to a country.

YPP Articles
About Painting and Becoming
Young Artists meet institutions:
some important transformations
You can only sink in quicksand
to your shoulders
About the portrait of the young
painter once again
Brackets, question - marks and
exclamations marks
Young in Latvia
About the street
A few remarks and anecdotes
about contemporary painting
The subjunctive sexual mood
blossoms allegedly
I Can’t - But We Can
Welcome to the Dollhouse: On
Painting and Perspective
Today painting media are more
visible than ever
Changes in the Everyday practices
in the Estonian Art Scene
A decade of young art
Where do you go to, my lovely

About
Painting
and
Becoming
by art critic and curator Jolanta Marcišauskytė-Jurašienė / Lithuania / 2011
60
The Lithuanian language is rich of etymologic
links of word meanings. Is it accidental that in
the Lithuanian language words standing for
“painting/paint/brush” are “tapyba/ tapymas/
tepti”, which are so similar to “tapimas (Eng.
be- coming)”? (This relation of “brush” and
“become” at a time was mentioned by art critic,
essayist and poet Alfonsas Andriuškevičius.)
Possibly there is a constant necessity encoded
in the genetics of painting - to become
something, to change, to be thought over and
over, to be reassessed.
If we imagine painting this way, then the whole
history of it seems to be a vibrant sea of transformations
and becomings. Alternation and
becoming something new are its conditions of
survival. However, this excursion to the eld of
ety- mology is not a pompous ode or an attempt
to give painting an extraordinary place.
A stray into links of meanings typical to the
Lithuanian language alone is provocative and
not very honest with regard to other languages.
Even though, the Lithuanian language is capable
of being proud of its old age and closeness
to Sanskrit. Many times painting used to
be romanticized, animated and the spirit was
deprived of it, it was constructed and deconstructed.
In addition, this excursion seems as
an invitation to try to cognize the essence of
painting from one more side – linguistic. This
is probably not a very productive way. However,
since there is no a single truth, it is more
important to raise new questions. Precisely
questions create background for existence.
Becomings of painting are determined by
many tangible and intangible, objective and
subjective elements, and it is impossible to
cover their panorama of alternation of ideas
and in uences. No matter what kind of art
history we wrote, it would be written wrongly.
Furthermore, attempts of this text to explore
painting and becoming will be only understood
as unpretentious sketches of possibility.
First of all, about the factor, why did a requirement
to newly talk of painting arise on the
whole? Is it due to a competition organized for
the third time already, this year acquiring an
international shade - “Young Painter Prize”?
During its rst year of existence, the event
rounded up and raised mainly the scene of
painters of Vilnius. This event yet became a
station for observation and introspection of
young generation of Lithuanian painters. At
Abo
least for me, and probably for most art viewers
and assessors of my generation, the view
of young painting existed as a wishy-washy
and ephemeral phenomenon until the competition
exhibitions have started. Time to time
somebody used to organize some exhibition,
Pai
somebody used to be noticed by curators or
gallerists, while some – emigrated or settled
somewhere into silence. The result is that we
know artists of the older and middle generations,
which are already institutionalized, however
we have an empty space with desultory
and
names of young artists, more or less known to
us. Yet we have quite clear scenery of young
painters stabilized by “Young Painter Prize”.
We can only have a sigh that the latter artists
have been luckier – their road to publicity is
less winding. Just work, have ideas, while the
Bec
presentation and publicity of you will be taken
care of by organizers of the competition, at
least partially.
During rst years of project arrangement, the
following proposition reasoning its demand
seemed right and motivat- ing: the credit of
youth is shortterm and it is essential to use it
qualitatively. After 30 years pass, it becomes
too late for that. For some time the conditions
for using the credit of youth have not been
established in Lithuania. However, today,
thinking of the situation of painting and young
painters, I would say that precisely through
this project the condi- tions for young painters
have improved and became better. Of course,
it would be a lie to state that suddenly gallerists
and collectors have started to ow into
studios of painters or crowds of interested
people started coming to their exhibitions. Still
the participants of the competition became
much more visible. Now critics, collectioners,
some colleagues recognize their artworks
from a distance, while those art- ists who try
to be productive and participate in different
ex- hibitions became even boring, since seen

many times. For several years together, I see
the same names among ten best participants
of the competition and I even catch myself
asking: “Is that really everything? Are they the
best painters of Lithuania“? I must admit that
the good will idea of organizers to help young
painters actually gained institu- tionalizing
power. So, “Young Painter Prize” means business
and actually contributes to the writing of
the painting history. We must look at it seriously.
This seriousness produces a requirement
to more attentively look at painting media.
Once I have heard wind of the question presented
to the organizer of the competition
by one of the theorists of dif- ferent media:
“And what is painting these days?“. As a fact,
its de nition cannot be contained in frames
of canvas. This situation has been present for
some time already. Long ago we have settled
down with Yves Klein, drawing by bod- ies of
naked women, Shigeko Kuboto’s painting using
va- gina, or Jurga Barilaitė, boxing canvas with
gloves soaked with paint. All the previously
mentioned forms of art fall under the category
of painting. However, when seniors of the department
of painting defend their graduation
theses, which are accomplished in forms of
installation, photography, video or sculpture,
the question of what the painting is arises
justly. Painter diploma sort of enables to partici-
pate in the competition and allows presenting
an artwork which should not necessarily
be accomplished in a form of painting. However,
the format of the competition perceives
painting in a traditional way – using paint and
canvas. So what is the contemporary painter
and what did his or her painting become? Why
do we talk of painting as of a sepa- rate eld of
creation, if it became interdisciplinary already
long ago, and learned to talk new and modern
language?
Painting has experienced crises many times
during its time of existence. When photography
originated, the realistic stimulation of the
scenery has lost its meaning, and experiments
with dab and colour have started. When moving
images appeared, painting has started to
imitate the move and to use a narrative way of
story-telling. For sev- eral times painting has
also experienced its own “funeral” while being
actually alive (the avant-garde movements
in the 7th decade of the XX c.). In Lithuania
this took place much later, in the presence of
postmodernism. Together, the self-perception
of the painter was changing. From almighty,
able to recreate miracles of God on canvas,
the painter has transformed into a scientist
and discoverer. From a madman, pouring his
sores of the spirit, he has changed into a rational
critic and destroyer of the image.... So,
different crises have encouraged painting to
transform. In the presence of crisis, painting’s
self-re ection encouraged to reconsider the
crea- tion and approach of the image: from a
mirror of the spirit inspired by inner aspirations
to a re ection of picture, creating such
image, with its beginning and end. So, painting
became painting about painting as well as
about a painter.
If in uence of lm, television, internet, photography
and press is so clear in contemporary
painting (the in uence functioning as a source
of painting crisis or a competitor and as a direct
transmitter of “new seeing”), and if images,
compo- sitional structures, virtuality issues
borrowed from them are so obvious, then what
could be painting interesting about? I think
that precisely the fact that painting, re ecting
itself and its own essence is constantly under
the necessity to update its lexicon, borrowing
words from other medias, shows that it is in a
not a very comfortable position. Therefore, in a
hier- archy of arts painting is still standing on
a separate step. But that position is not more
uncomfortable than, for instance, in textile or
graphic art; they are also under the necessity
to constantly reassess them. Probably, only
photography goes one step forward and does
not care about itself. (Its rise could be illustrated
by the fact that since the Middle Ages
up to Baroque, tapestries imitating painting
have been weaved, while contemporary textile
imitates photographic images.)
In spite of supposed creation method of painting
as retrograde media, it still stays favorite,
purchased and dominant. In a eld of all disinterested
arts it is distinct as an art form expressing
the most proximate relation between
the creator and his or her environment. And
here there is no any modernistic animation –
since it is elementary that a movement made
by hand echoes everything, what is cumulated
in the head of a painting man and synthesized
from environment, more accurately and more
sensitively, as compared to a camera, for instance.
In general, looking snappy at this matter, if
a question of self- perception is important
to a phenomenon, it means that it is in a dynamic
stage of adolescence. This applies to
both: painting and a painter, who re ects on
painting’s nature, his place in painting and his
possibilities. Therefore, “Young Painter Prize”
is a handy means for exposition of transformations
and “yet” alive searches under the
window-case glass. As long as questions concerned
with painting are raised, it will keep
becoming something new over and over again.
Due to the reason mentioned, senility does not
threaten painting so far.

Young Artists
meet
institutions:
some important
transformtions.
Youn
meet
insti
some
tran
by art critic Anneli Porri / Estonia / 2011
64
It is an ungrateful task to speak about young
art of today, because this topic is one of the
most eager to change. It is unstable and more
or less yet unexplored area that will alter
immediately even before we can draw our
conclusions about it. Therefore I think it would
be good to start a little ashback to contemporary
history of young art in Estonia and also, in
order to speak about collaboration between
in- stitutions and young artists in Estonia nowadays,
we have to agree the concepts in use.
First we have to look at this as a continuous
process and second, both issues – young art
and an institution – had transformed into new
concepts.

The meaning of Young Art
Today, being a young artist is not a big value on
its own any more. This label is not working as
a handicap or unique selling proposition as it
was common to two heydays of young art. First
wave of young art excitement happened in
1990s, with its peak in the years of 1996-1998.
In the end of 1990’s art students were the
crowd who were in advantaged position, they
had no burden of the Soviet-Modernist conception
of art and re ned taste, but they were the
best informed about new trends, theories and
esthetics and dared to use the new media, as
well as new presentation techniques. The new
reformed contemporary art in 1990’s favored
that kind of bold attitude and anti-esthetics,
which was quite handy and accomplishable to
art students. The Soros Center for Arts, Estonia,
did a good job with younger generation, functioning
as a gateway or facilitator to the international
art life. The second high tide of young
art was in the middle of 2000’s, which showed
its positive attitude by publishing books, organizing
seminars on young art and especially
doing large scale exhibitions with strong institutional
support, New Wave (at Tallinn Art Hall,
curated by Anders Härm and Hanno Soans) and
Concequences and Proposals (with CCA, curated
by Rael Artel and Anneli Porri) for example.
A unique compilation of interviews with artists
by Karin Laansoo bears a title “22+ Young Estonian
Artists” (Estonian Academy of Arts, 2005)
and gives a good introspection to the life and
possibilities of an artist at the age of 22+.
Today, it is dif cult to see an extreme fascination
about freshmen in art. The courage and
loud alternativeness of 1990’s has transformed
into a new professionalism of 2010’s. If in the
elds with developed gallery systems the alternative
means something that is not willing to
obey the rules of the market, then in Estonia
one doesn’t need to struggle with that kind of
dilemmas. Here are no obstacles to be and look
professional, mature or well-trained. As the
bewildered actress Katariina Lauk expressed
her feelings after seeing the exhibition of
the Köler Prize at CAME in the weekly cultural
TV-broadcast OP: „Where is the rebellion?!
Where is the bursting energy of youth?! Why
they are talking so seriously, so neatly? What is
going on with youngsters?!“
The meaning of Institution
What are the most important characteristics
of an institu- tion in art eld for collaborating
artist? One can assume the facilities, exhibition
space, budget, professional personnel, contacts,
network and public recognition perhaps.
The list of institutions that are collaborating
with artist has got some appendage: in addition
to statefunded museums and gal- leries
there are new initiatives like independent
curators and independent project spaces. To
face the truth, being an independent artist or
being a state institution, both of them have
to depend on the royalties and stipends of
the Cultural Endowment to ful ll the nancial
needs of planned projects. If some years ago
a contract to some state-funded art institution
functioned as a good recommendation and
a letter of guarantee for the Cultural Endowment
application, then now it is not, because it
means bigger budget, bigger needs and bigger
expectations. Also a bigger chance to fail.
But what collaboration means? Provide a professional
service and know - how, held in favor;
take into account the wishes, ideas, suggestions
and applications by young artists. What is
the most important thing in collaboration? To
end up with a positive result, I would say.
Maybe this sumup by a cultural researcher
Aili Aareleid helps to understand the relations
between younger genera- tion of today and
leaders of institutions: „Young people in
1990’s got an extraordinary opportunity to
use their energy and daring for reconstruction
of the state and to renovate it in a novel way.
Many of our political and business elite are
from the age group of 35—45. Today’s 20 year
olds have lived in the conditions of expanding
consumerist society, and their opportunities
for self-implementation are austere be- cause
of the former generation who are lling the
positions.“ There are basically no galleries that
use the idea of young art as their tag line. I
think, this is not expressing despise of the art
works by latest generation, but this is underlining
the above mentioned professionalism:
there are no need to give a handicap to youngsters;
they are able to contest in general level.
Of course, there are galleries that have been
extremely kind to young artists, Hobusepea,
Draakon and Tallinn City gallery, the Contemporary
Art Museum of Estonia has gave chance
to students to gain the very rst but DIY- professional
exhibiting experiences, also Y Gallery in
Tartu and City galleries in Võru and Haapsalu,
Art Halls in Tartu and Pärnu, if to mention the
most active non-pro t ones. Commercial galleries
Vaal and late ArtDepo has put some effort
to rise up young generation artists, now is the
Gallery of Temnikova&Kasela shown itself as
an energetic new con- tender in the eld of artist-representing
galleries.
Of course there was an exception in the gallery
and cura- torial eld of Estonia, I am thinking
of the Rael Artel Gal- lery: Non-Pro t Project
Space, which was active during years 2004-
2008 in Tartu and Pärnu. An independent
curator Rael Artel has stated that she will collaborate
as a curator only with artist from her
own generation. She explains her choic- es in
the beginning of working up her own non-pro t
project space: “There was no problem with artists
from the younger generation – their drawers
mainly held school works and the chance to
do something new seemed more like a positive
challenge than interference in the creative
bursts of an artist.” So this is also pointing out
the differences in working methods among
different generations, and the clear decision
made inside of the institutional frame.
What comes this very year, the Capital of Cultural
Tallinn 2011Foundation has involved
many artist and authors from younger generation
to their programme and the outcome of
this liaison is quite outstanding. There are several
large scale projects that cannot be realized
without the additional support of the institution
of The Capital of Culture, both in nancial
and ideological scale. Maybe the festival of urban
installations LIFT 11 is the most charming
example of such project. And also all kinds of
events in festival format seem to appeal more
young performers, for example yearly ART IST
KUKU NU UT in Tartu.
And nally a cherry on the top: prizes for artists
who are active in the eld of ne art. The rst, who
established a prize for young artist, was the
Gallery Vaal in 1991, it was announced up to
year 2008. Last years of it the prize has got a
practical angle, the winner was sent to some
contem- porary art event in Europe to gain
experience and ideas. Seven years ago in the
conditions of economic and young art boom,
a handful of kind businessmen started also a
prize for BA and MA students of the Fine Arts
faculty of the Estonian Academy of Arts, the
Young Artist’s Prize. The prizewinner is to be
chosen out of all graduates, the jury make their
deci- sion after seeing the BA portfolios and
MA thesis. This little nancial injection is meant
to be as a collegial recognition and a material
aid to keep the young and promising talent
working as an artist.
And last but not least, the Köler Prize, established
this year by the Contemporary Art Museum
of Estonia. This is not par- ticularly initiated
as an award for young artist, but all nomi- nees
were still representing the younger generation.
Köler Prize as the local analogue for the Turner
Prize set up an extremely spectacular show and
we sincerely hope it will go on in the future.

You can
only sink in
quicksand
to your
shoulders
by art critic Danutė Gambickaitė / Lithuania / 2012
68
Becoming as quicksand
In her text for last year’s Young Painter Prize
catalogue, the art critic Jolanta Marcišauskytė-Jurašienė
addressed the etymology of the
Lithuanian word tapyba (painting) and its links
with the word tapsmas (becoming), which
refers to an existential transformation. Another
art critic, Alfonsas Andriuškevičius, once
mentioned it, too. Now it appears to me that
the connection of painting and becoming is
so fascinating, alluring and viscous that upon
entering its domain one’s consciousness/subconscious
finds itself to be much like some
living creature struggling in quicksand. And in
quicksand, the more one struggles, the faster
one becomes trapped. Did you know that it is
impossible to completely sink in quicksand?
That the body always submerges in it only to
the shoulders? Struggling only accelerates the
process, but the end is always the same – only
to the shoulders.
I must confess that asking me to write about
painting was a somewhat risky decision. I have
written and said on a number of occasions
that I am not interested much in contemporary
painting (save for a few favourite authors). One
may wonder why someone who is not interested
much in contemporary painting would nevertheless
agree to write a text about, and for
the Young Painter Prize catalogue of all things.
The answer is very simple – every attempt at
writing is, in a way, a search for an answer as
well as reading, even if one is not willing to
engage in that. This text is a search for a missing
(answer), the territory of the search is the
art field, and the search party are those writing
and reding this text. Perhaps in the end (of the
text) it will become clear what the writer and
the reader will have found, and whether their
findings coincide, finally – whether they were
searching for the same thing at all.
It is most sensible to start the search with reviewing
what you already know and remember.
Thus, I would also like to begin with an overview
of what I already said about contemporary
painting in my text about last year’s Young
Painter Prize. In this text, I transfer the inklings
from the earlier text to the present and elaborate
on them in the form of it still seems to me.
You
The reason I am doing this is not laziness; the
fact is, my insights presented in that text have
barely changed, only now they are augmented
with other insights.
only
It still seems to me that contemporary young
It still seems to me...
Lithuanian painting is so far trapped in the
stage of painting about painting. That it resembles
a serpent that devours its own tail and
gets stuck at some point. It still seems to me
that self-reflection in painting looks more vivid
quic
and forceful (perhaps it is so because those
who employ it are considered, quite deservedly,
to be the best in qualitative and other
senses, or maybe because a critical mass is
absent). The discourse of painting about painting,
intertwined with umpteenth declaration of
to yo
painting’s “death”, incessantly reapproached
concepts by Richter and Tuymans, and emphasis
on the process of painting itself still induce
certain tedium.
shou
It still seems to me that many young painters
(no all of them, mind you) strive to do everything
right and are afraid of mistakes, which
makes painting that is not about painting look
timid. After all, everybody has their own favourite
themes, which seem to flash here and
there, but the wish to “do it right” still prevails
in the end. The format of a competition does
not help much here, because it naturally inspires
thoughts that are associated with the
desire to win. It still seems to me that the paradox
of the reverse fasces can still be helpful in
discussing the participants of the Young Painter
Prize ’11 competition (or the young painting
scene in general). While the Italian fascists
claimed that it was more difficult to break a
bundle of rods than a single rod, in the case of
the YPP, on the contrary, it is more difficult to
break a single rod than a bundle. Many of the
young painters look stronger separately than
together. When they are bundled together,
the weak points and complexes of their works

ecome apparent. Or the boredom that engulfs
the viewer simply intensifies. On the other
hand, would the situation change if it was not a
competition that wrote the history of contemporary
young painting?
Still, the question I mentioned in the text
which I am quoting and slightly paraphrasing
now emerges almost instinctively: what
happened/happens to painting when the
competition format became/becomes nearly
the principal “writer” of the history of contemporary
painting? The very surfacing of this
question says and answers quite a lot. The
confusing juxtaposition of the past and present
tense forms of the verbs “to happen” and “to
become” is not accidental. It shows that the
writer of this and that texts is unsure whether
the YPP (starting with the very first one) only
presented a clearer view of the already wellestablished
contemporary young Lithuanian
painting scene, or whether it also contributed
to its formation. Ultimately, this lack of certainty
leads to some progress in the search for the
missing answer and somewhat slows down the
process of sinking in quicksand. This is how the
time for assumptions comes eventually.
The tautology and old age of painting,
but still…
It still seems to me that contemporary painting
is tautological. On the other hand, tautology
lurks in many places: iron iron, photographic
photography, picturesque painting, as well as
in that it still seems to me that it still seems to
me. There is a saying: if you’re seeing visions,
cross yourself, but still…
I often think about the situation of contemporary
painting as a certain tautology of the
medium or its old age. In its young years it was
handsome, selfconfident and even somewhat
narcissistic. It has lived through centuries,
changed many times, adapted to the environment,
attempted to arouse interest or shock,
please or, on the contrary, induce disgust.
Today, this vitality and energy of painting have
exhausted themselves somewhat. Painting has
grown tired, and the only way out is to understand
this fatigue, accept and make friends
with it, and the go with the flow upon understanding
it. A void/gap instantly opens in the
inner space, and painting, like any other medium,
like any other thing, really needs this void/
gap.
But still painting, even though tired, is dictatorial.
It is very difficult to understand it, and perhaps
only one who paints and becomes can do
it. Others can only imagine and suppose how
the one who paints is feeling while experiencing
the dictate, tautology and senility of painting,
and at the same time trying to find a still
uninhabited void and gap in its inner space.
Phantom Limb
There is an odd psychological phenomenon
known as a phantom limb 1 . Imagine that some
part of your body – for instance, a leg – has
been amputated. It seems that it is really absent,
you cannot touch it, you cannot rest on it
while walking, but you still feel it, as if it became
invisible. One can find something similar
in the Lithuanian poet Justinas Marcinkevičius’
poem Ballad of a Leg 2 . You could learn to live
with this loss, but that ghost leg keeps haunting
you. In a sense, the situation of painting has
been very similar from the middle of the 20th
century to this day. Something is constantly
being amputated, something is being lost and
rejected, but the ghost of the things that are
rejected, negated and amputated seems to
remain. Finally, the notion of a phantom limb
can also be used to refer to the death of painting,
the dictate of painting, or the fact that
the painter gets rid of the hand, yet still keeps
thinking about it…
In any case, the phantom limb condition in the
context of contemporary painting is related
to painting’s self-reflexivity, mentioned many
times in this text already, the syndrome of a
painter who does everything right, or, finally,
(in my case) the boredom that overwhelms one
while thinking about contemporary painting.
In a certain sense, boredom is also a phantom
limb. I am bored, but I am still reflecting on
why I am bored, sinking into boredom ever
more.
On the other hand, the situation is not as dramatic
as it might seem. There definitely are
young painters who do not attempt to once
again rethink their relationship with the chosen
medium or the possibility of doing everything
right, but rather just speak out on the issues
they care about by painting.
Coming back to the search, becoming,
and quicksand
Has the end of this text revealed what the reader
and the writer have found? So far it is only
the writer who can answer this question. The
writer has found a way out in the following saying:
let it go. It is impossible to sink completely
in quicksand anyway. In the end, you always
sink to your shoulders only. In conclusion, here
are the guidelines for escaping from quicksand.
Guidelines for escaping from quicksand
1. Stay clear of quicksand.
2. If you have entered a zone with quicksand
risk, find a long staff.
3. If you start sinking in quicksand, drop
all of your things away as quickly as possible.
4. Relax.
5. Breathe deeply.
6. If possible, try lying on yor back.
7. Be patient.
8. If you have a long staff, use it.
9. Take a long break after each action.
1
This is also the title of a contemporary painting exhibition
currently on show at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art
(until October 21).
2
Once a man came back from war
and brought with him a giant scar.
He isn’t doing anything since,
searching for his leg and failing to find it.
Maybe his leg is dancing somewhere,
and a soldier is playing for it in a backstreet.
People throw him a brass coin
for an unusually large leg.
Ah, that leg! It could do anything.
One couldn’t be ashamed of it.
Most importantly, it walked. It walked!
And had a foot, just like others.
Stand apart, deep beds of soil,
listen – a soldier is playing:
simply, wistfully, monotonously.
Holding a leg instead of a violin.

About
the portrait
of the young
painter
once again
by “The Rooster gallery” gallerist Jurgita Juospaitytė-Bitinienė / Lithuania / 2012
72

As the competition of “Young Painter Prize”
runs up, every year wel- coming more and
more participants and observers, it becomes
in- teresting to have a look at young painters
out
from the art management perspective.
The pro tability research accomplished analyzing
European culture and creative sector
showed that the highest pro tability index
was present in the eld of the ne arts. Though
rait
local Lithuanian market is too small to keep
the competitive ability in most elds of creative
in- dustries as well as in the contemporary art,
we need to consider the fact that the global
demand for creation is growing without
cease, establishing unique possibilities for a
young artist. In the context of globalization
programs, international residences, traveling
nter
sectional exhibitions – changes in the career
of the young artist are more prompt and more
visible.
processes- participation in student exchange
gain
TODAY’S YOUNG CREATOR
The portrait of today’s creator is rather distant
from the im- age of the artist, which is still
strong in the general public romantic, ranging
through torment of inspiration, pain and
de- sires. Young artists - ef cient, responsible,
hardworking and much demanding from themselves.
He or she does not wait to be noticed
by exhibition curators, art critics or galleries.
Instead, they look for opportunities to be accredited
to the art market.
THE WAY ARTISTS WORK
Every person has his or her own daily routine –
the sequence of actions and works, determined
by abilities and habits. It is a myth that
artists are different and live from one inspiration
moment to another. Most famous artists,
writers, philosophers plan their time. There is
a joke that Gerhard Richter holds to his daily
rou- tine schedule so sharp, that it is possible
to set clocks following it. The agenda and consistent
abidance by it nurtures the talent. Thus
most often young artists have their well-established
work routine.
CREATION
A young creator acts in the context of the tradition
and in uenc- es coming from the West. The
spectrum of creation is very wide. Therefore it
would be dif cult to single out some common
denomi- nator outlining the creation of young
people. In all probability it is the whole of
ideologies or attitudes, which crystallizes out
to certain tendencies. Idealistic background
of works in the crea- tion of Lithuanian young
artists is not very wide. It ranges from rather
formal to philosophical and personal matured,
visually ex- plicated and reasoned ideas. The
oneness of the young generation of artists is
related to the western assimilation of discourses
and contexts as well as rethinking and their
relation to the tradition.
ACHIEVEMENTS
The index of activity and achievements of Lithuanian
painters could be the number of scholarships
and honours. Here Alina Melnikova a
few times in a row received a SLEIPNIR scholarship
from Nordic Council of Ministers. Painter
Eglė Karpavičiūtė became a laureate
of international competition “The Sovereign
European Art Prize”. Povilas Ramanauskas was
awarded a premium of IInd place and received
a reward of “International Panathlon” in the
exhibition “Fair Play”. While Darius Jaruševičius
received a public artist’s scholarship for
implementation of painterly animated lm
“Polyrabbit. Du- plicate”. Eglė Ulčickaitė was
awarded a premium of Viktoras Vizgirda, and
Petras Lincevičius gained a premium of Dalia
Gruodienė’s name. Paulė Boculaitė has created
a scenography for the performance “Mr.
Fluxus arba Šarlatanai”, and the creative team
of it received three Golden Stage Crosses (lith.
Auksinius scenos kryžius).
WHAT MISTAKES ARTISTS MAKE
As auctions increasingly present artists outre
“million for an artwork”, art agents string doors
of art academies looking for new talents. Yet
many artists stay unnoticed.
One of the mistakes often made by young artists
– they “overvalue” their works. Huge prices
during their rst exhibitions create obstacles to
run their further activity. In the beginning of
their career most famous artists (for example,
Warhol or Basquiat) used to sell their works for
really conservative prices. One more mistake
made by young painters is too poor attention
devoted for the technical aspect of the creation.
Sometimes, realization possibilities of a
ne artwork are highly in uenced by not qualitative
or wrongly prepared canvas.
THE GALLERY AND THE ARTIST
In the beginning of the creative road artists
often take up self-man- agement. The coming
of the gallery makes the start in the art world
easier for a young artist, therefore the relation
between the gallery and the artist becomes
more and more important. This in a way reminds
of a moment of a gathering of artist
groups however it is more than just an idealogical
compound.
Looking from the gallery’s perspective, the
description “young artist from the Baltic state”
does not function as a unique spell word in the
global art market. However work with young
painters is full of exciting discoveries.

Brackets,
question -
marks and
exclamations
marks
by art critic and curator Julija Dailidėnaitė / Lithuania / 2012
76
BRACKETS. PROCESS
Bra
In the latter decades, the rapidly changing economic,
technological, social, cultural resources
and the speeding way of life, consumer thinking,
priorities and values of the society, have
determined the situation of culture as well
as its institutions – art centres and art galler-
que
ies have altered their activities. The essential
changes in the art of Lithuania took place in
the end of the 20th century, and in the rst
decade of the 21st century: new institutions
were established, the number of exhibitions
has expanded, and the work of artists be- came
mar
more active. The latter phenomena have determined
changes and certain processes of topical
globalization as well as the artist’s junction
with post-industrial reality, adjusting to changes
of scenery. When analyzing the situation
of young artists in the society, it is not easy to
excl
talk of the creative work of the young generation
artists, since this area is one of the most
dynamic in the cultural eld. On the other hand,
it is the area with little analysis done, since
it keeps constantly experiencing alternation.
mar
Therefore, it is distinguished for multi-meaning
and interpretation possibilities, opening ways
for discussions.
Young artist‘s integration into social space – a
continuous process. Creators constantly face
an increasing ow of information (Internet,
social Internet sites, mobility programs, etc.).
Their thinking ac- quires a more cosmopolitan
character – young creators do not associate
their activity with a simply national paradigm.
In other words, creators become free from
their geographic place of residence or a place
of creation and that conditioned limitation. As
a result of the reaction to this kind of changes,
art institutions become more open to „untested“
art and declare their support to young
creators. In the latter decade the number of
different institutions cooperating with young
artists is signi cantly increasing: beside the
institutions and galleries which are nanced
by the government, new initiatives start their
activity, art curators successfully implement
their work, new independent project spaces

uild up. Despite the fact that the artist works
independently or cooperates with state institutions,
his or her status is always in uenced
by nancial resources, because the creative
productivity of artists mostly depend on the
nancial means assigned to them, such as scholarships,
honorariums and assets of cultural
support fund, intended for implementation of
projects. Often this becomes the essential condition
and possibility to realize their creative
ideas.
In the making of Lithuanian art market the
con icting forces become evident – the ones
between art creators and state institutions.
This confrontation is constantly present in the
public discourse: young creators, after they
graduate their art academies, nd it dif cult to
integrate into a vivid social and cultural environment
of the state. Danutė Gambickaitė, art
critic of the young generation, has named
this pecking situation as intermediate, re ecting
an entirety of change and indeterminacy
factors. It appeared in the latter decade, in the
context of art uctuation process.
Today’s complicated relations between the
young artist and art institutions, frequently
arising complex in exible processes of cultural
product creation and information dissemination,
again make this theme very relevant.
Institutions which have the biggest in uence in
the art eld do not devote enough attention to
the creation process of the young artist, as well
as to the realization of his or her artworks or
further advertising of them. Due to the reason
mentioned only a small number of galleries
and curators decide to represent young artists.
Often, in order to justify the importance
of different cultural phenomena, it is shaded
by some famous names or desert. Therefore
young artists are left behind and stay in a
certain art periphery. It is often forgotten that
young artists, if motivated and trained, could
actually represent the State’s higher art in the
future perspective. Young generation of artists
is able to realize and under- stand themselves
only in a case of a wider context. The investment
orientated to the future is basically risky,
however why should not we try it?
QUESTION MARKS. TODAY
The creative work of young artists has always
had a form of manifest and protest. What kind
of a young creator is the one of today? What
is the idealistic background of their works?
Does the contemporary generation of young
artists preserve a moment of identi cation and
exclusivity? It could be presumed that a new
generation of artists is in the process of formation
at the moment. Maybe not so actively as
we would like to, without any big revolutions,
however with strong conceptual decisions.
The maturing generation of new artists, being
under the in uence of older generation and
having less and less connection to historical,
political and economic past of Lithuania
creates social aspects and art highlighting
critical relation of the artist and the society.
The young generation is characteristic of
narrative, minimalism or cardinal maximalism,
defragmentation of memory, recall, rehash
and appropriation. Really, in the era of modern
technologies and cheap ights appropriation is
widely spread. It could be assumed that it has
acquired features of a virus. Yes, that what it is,
a young person – a researcher, creator, observer,
learner (in a wider sense). However, we wish
him or her to be a personality, able to think
and capable of selecting proper information,
searching as well as choosing the creative road
which could re ect him or her best.
When analyzing the status of the young artist
in the eld of contemporary culture it becomes
evident that often a young creator gradu- ates
an academy of art without any knowledge of
survival using his speciality. Also, he or she
lacks knowledge of self-representation and art
management. The artist creates and designs
himself being dependent on pecking conditions:
if the talent is noticed and evalu- ated,
then he works with galleries and is invited to
group exhibitions of the contemporary art or
international art fairs; however, if the galleries
take no interest in the young talent, then
groups of artists develop – their actions are organized;
or the specialization is being changed,
and the artistic expression is pushed away to a
hobby level.
EXCLAMATION MARKS.
“YOUNG PAINTER PRIZE“
In the latter decade the objective of art institutions
to cooperate with young artists has
evidently energized. Recently, next to state,
institutional and private art centres and galleries,
there is an increase in non-institutional
initiatives, designed for young artists. One of
the rst prime non-institutional initiatives is the
project “Young Painters Prize“. It aims at patronization
of young artists (up to 30 years of
age, inclusive). It helps to open roads to publicity,
encourages artists to improve and preserve
faith in their power of creation. This project
combines a huge potential of young artists.
By organizing the exhibitions and events of
“Young Painter Prize“, by publishing informational
publications, catalogues, we aim at
gath- ering not only the youth who paint (the
representatives of which participate in the
competitive programme), but also art critics
(who write texts for project’s catalogues),
young designers (who create models of catalogues
and design of posters), young specialists
of humanitarian sciences (who accomplish
tasks of text translation, in- terpretation of direct
speech, and text editing), young musicians
(who prepare their performances for the evening
of awards). There fore, this project covers
much more art elds than its title declares.
Young creators are writing a new page of art
history even today. The more the state, institutional
or personal initiatives appear, opening
roads to „possibility“, the stronger their con
dence become and the more purposeful their
creative activity is.

Young in Latvia
by “Gallery 21” gallerist Ivonna Veiherte / Latvia / 2013

In Latvia, too, young artists have an everincreasing
range of opportunities to win recognition,
not only in the context of their own country
or the Baltic States. The world has become
more accessible. The following account reveals
that in Latvia, too, there is funding available
for young artists (admittedly, most of it coming
from private patrons of the arts).
Latvia’s largest private galleries focus on promoting
young painters in particular, because
the State Culture Capital Foundation tends to
allocate great- er support to other forms of
visual arts, which means that painting ends up
‘getting less’. Accordingly, the private galleries
are almost alone (with the ex- ception of several
exhibitions in the frame of the Creative
Workshop at the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall of
the National Museum of Art and the Intro Hall
of the Riga Art Space) in offering regular exhibitions
of painting. Since the visual art scene
in Latvia is, by tradition, strongly centralised,
the main possibilities for exhibiting one’s work
and achieving signi cant results are available in
Riga, although the ambitious Cēsis Art Festival
also invites one of the young artists every year,
and during the last year the Daugavpils Mark
Rothko Art Centre has emerged as a promising
venue.
Skatindama visų trijų Baltijos šalių menininkų
bendradarbiavimą, Gallery 21 Rygoje suorganizavo
parodas, kuriose buvo eksponuojami
ne tik Latvijos, bet ir Lietuvos, Estijos jaunųjų
menininkų darbai. Galerija taip pat aktyviai
rek- lamuoja jaunuosius menininkus ir tarptautiniu
lygmeniu. Šiuo metu atidaryta dar
viena privačių parodų vieta – Mūkusala meno
salonas, suteikiantis jauniesiems menininkams
galimybę pristatyti savo darbus. Jaunieji latvių
men- ininkai taip pat bendradarbiauja su
Rygos galerija Māksla XO. Be abejonės, yra ir
daugiau galimybių eksponuoti savo darbus,
tačiau minėtosios galerijos savo veikla parodė
kryptingesnį požiūrį ir pasiekė reikšmingesnių
ilgalaikių rezultatų.
In order to promote collaboration between all
three Baltic States in the eld of art, Gallery 21
has organised exhibitions in Riga featuring the
work not only of young Latvian artists, but also
young Lithuanian and Estonian artists. The gallery
has also been active in promoting young
artists at an international level. Nowadays,
there is a second private exhibition venue
offering the possibility for young painters to
present their work, namely the Mūkusala Art
Salon. Young Latvian artists also collaborate
with the Riga gallery Māksla XO. Of course,
there are many other exhibition opportunities,
but the above-mentioned galler- ies have
demonstrated a more purposeful approach
and have achieved more signi cant long-term
results through their exhibition activity.
Latvia has a fairly large number of galleries,
so the possibility of exhibiting one’s work
does exist. And if we consider the support
programmes for artists, examined below, then
we may conclude that there really is ample
support for young artists, although it does not
re ect the particular signi cance of painting as
a language of visual art. Priorities have also
changed in terms of the actual means of expression
in painting. The professionalism that
was once essential no longer has any signi
cance, and the search for re ned tonal relationships
has ceased to matter, because the rapid
tempo of the age presents entirely different
demands in this realm, too, ignoring the special
character of painting as a language. No longer
signi cant, and gradually being forgotten, are
‘old- fashioned’ aspects that used to be very
important: mastering the profession, talent,
studies from life. This means that the number
of artists is increasing and competition can
no longer be objective, since it proceeds from
other criteria: topicality and originality of the
subject, innovation, adaptation of concepts.
Unavoidably, we see increasing clamour for
attention, with an increase in the size of works,
leading to unjusti ably large formats, the use of
impermanent materials and engagement with
taboo themes, thus diverting public attention
from works that demand contemplation, visual
training and other ‘élite’ skills that are no longer
being cultivated.
All the more laudable, then, is the Lithuanian
YPP (Young Painter Prize) initiative, which represents
another opportunity to discuss painting
and bring it to public attention. It does not
matter whether the painting under discussion
is gural, abstract or of some other kind, but
rather that the discussion should keep to the
same categories. And, as always, one often has
cause to doubt whether certain of the competitors
have actually mastered the means of
expression of the form of art in which they are
engaged.
In Latvia, as everywhere else, the techniques
of painting, sculpture and graphic art are seen
as outmoded, and those galleries that exhibit
painting more than the ‘new media’ are described
as ‘commercial’ (because a paint- ing is
theoretically more likely to nd a buyer than an
installation). However, institutional support is
restricted, which means that more of it goes to
media employing a different visual language.
Accordingly, even young people nd it more
advantageous to study at the Department of
Visual Communications of the Latvian Academy
of Art.
However, if we ignore the local situation, we nd
that among the younger generation of Latvian
artists the names known relatively well in the
world are connected with painting, namely
Jānis Avotiņš and Ēriks Apaļais, who are represented
by galleries outside of Latvia. There are
some other painters making a career abroad
(such as Anita Arbidāne), whose work nds its
way directly into the collections of painting
connoisseurs. They don’t even attempt to show
their work in Latvia, where they’d have to compete
with all the above-mentioned, provincially
misunderstood trends in contemporary art.
It has to be said that in general artists tend
to feel rather unappreciated, because to be
known only in Latvia soon becomes insuf cient
for a young artist.
Everyone hopes in their heart that they’ll get
noticed in the great world of art. And this
brings them to the next questions. What will
get me noticed? How can I achieve this? At
what age should I already be more seriously
involved in the art scene?
Since the galleries of the little Baltic States do
not and cannot shape the process of world art,
and in uential curators arrive only too rarely,
the young ar- tist painters among them – seek
their own answers to these questions. And as
elsewhere in the world, so too in Latvia, it’s
all based on the principle that “it’s up to you”.
Many go abroad in search of success, take part
in competitions and artist-in-residence programmes,
and hope that a gallery will represent
them at an international art event and that
someone from the outside world will notice
them.
A problematic aspect for the recognition of
a young artist in Latvia is undoubtedly the
restricted publicity, owing the lack of press
publications in the eld, which, in its turn, limits
the possibilities for high quality reviews. Often
an artist feels entirely forgotten and redundant
after an exhibition, because, unless an article
about them has appeared in the magazine
Studija, which comes out six times a year, an
exhibition will leave no lasting impression. On
the other hand, the Latvian art portal www.arterritory.com,
which is oriented towards the art
of all the Baltic States, Scandinavia and Russia,
active reports on cur- rent developments, and
accordingly is to be seen as the most important
voice promoting art.
The most ambitious and important event in
visual arts in Latvia is the Purvītis Prize. Every
two years since 2008 work by eight nalists is
exhibited in the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall of the
Latvian National Museum of Art and an international
jury chooses one winner, who receives
a prize of 20 000 lats and the chance to hold a
solo exhibition. This prize is organised by the
Latvian National Museum of Art in collaboration
with a private patron, SIA Alfor, which has
currently emerged as the leading supporter
of various forms of art in Latvia. With the aim
of directly promoting achievement in Latvian
contemporary art, the Purvītis Prize, being the
main form of recognition, is based on a multi-

tiered system, which, according to the statutes,
covers all the exhibitions and events within
Latvia. There is a nomination for ‘excellence
and innovation’ in visual art, and the artists
nominated for the award are in any case noted
in the publications relating to the Purvītis
Prize. In a sense, the jury of the nal, which has
so far included the Minister of Culture, the
Director of the National Museum of Art, one of
the collectors, one of the Latvian critics, along
with celebrated foreign curators, has had to
take on the responsibility of focussing attention
on the particular medium represented by
the prize-winner. The very rst Purvītis Prize
went to the young multimedia artist Katrīna
Neiburga, and this year, too, it was won by a
young artist, in this case one who represents
and has technically mastered the traditional
medium of painting, namely Andris Eglītis, for a
series of works painted using natural materials,
one that convinces the viewer by its fresh and
creative approach.
Evidently with the aim of revealing and presenting
the most interesting de- velopments
in the painting of the younger generation,
D. Barčevska has curated two the ambitious
exhibitions, “Candy bomber. Young in Latvian
paint- ing I” (2007) and “Urban children. Young
in Latvian painting II” (2010), at the Arsenāls
Exhibition Hall of the National Museum of Art.
As far as possible, the two exhibitions have
once again focussed attention on painting and
on those engaged in it: each artist was able
to show several paintings, thus giving an insight
into their work. Thirtyve is the accepted
age limit for an artist to be regarded as young,
which means that work by students and their
teachers could be displayed together.
Also providing support for young painters are
the scholarships and prizes for students organised
by the Latvian Academy of Art, where
painting was historically a priority right up to
the 1990s, when, as a result of various develop-
ments, the Department of Visual Art and
Communication became much more active in
promoting its students.
In a sense, this tendency, too, can be explained
in terms of world trends. As elsewhere, there is
in Latvia a wish to follow these trends. However,
knowing the unique accomplishments represented
in Latvian painting, this focus away
from it seems rather a shame.
The main professional stimulus and publicity
for students of the Painting Department in particular
is the SEB Scholarship in Painting, established
in 2008 (funding travel along with 1200
lats nancial support) and received thus far by
Neonilla Medvedeva, Atis Jākobsons, Zane
Tuča, Elza Sīle, Laimdota Steķe and Klāvs Loris.
The competition jury includes the Director of
the National Museum of Art, the Rector of the
Academy of Art and the Head of the Department
of Painting as well as recognised artists
and theoreticians.
Alongside the international Erasmus scholarship
programmes, signi cant at the present day
is the Ināra Tetereva Art Scholarship, which
supports several of the most talented and zealous
with a total scholarship fund of 18,600 lats
per year. This includes study trips and the holding
of an exhibition on graduation from the
Latvian Academy of Art. Currently it is being
received by the young painter Sandra Strēle.
The cooperation project “Boris and Ināra
Teterev Foundation Programme for Excellence
in Education” has been established, as set out
in a memorandum of cooperation concluded
between the academy and the Teterev Foundation
in 2011, with the aim of promoting “the
strategic development of a high standard of artistic
education in Latvia”. Since 2011 the Latvian
Academy of Art Prize has been awarded in
collaboration with the foundation. In the Young
Artists Category, it has so far been received by
painter Jānis Avotiņš.
In collaboration with entrepreneur Guntis
Rāvis, the Boriss Bērziņš Scholarship (100 lats
a month for a year) has been awarded to three
students every year since 2010. In this case the
criterion – for students of the Painting Department,
too – is the accomplished use of line.
The Brederlo von Sengbusch Prize in Art (EUR
4000) has been awarded biannually since
2006, the jury being permitted to subdivide it.
For 14 years now a lump sum of 1000 USD has
been awarded at the begin- ning of the teaching
year as the scholarship of the Paul Puzinas
Figure Painting Masterclass Prize.
The Latvian Academy of Art currently also
offers “Support for the master’s study programmes
of the Latvian Academy of Art”. Thus,
interest in painting has not died altogether in
Latvia. It has to be said that this is also due to
the efforts of the Janis Rozentāls Secondary
School of Art, which equips young people with
the professional skills for further studies.
Many thanks once again to the organisers and
supporters of YPP who promote and maintain
the prestige of painting.

About
the street
by art critic Gerda Paliušytė / Lithuania / 2013
86
Making its debut this year, Vilnius Street Art
Festival chooses the façade of the closed
cinema theatre Lietuva as one of the walls
dedicated to street artists, newly painted on
the occasion of Lithuania’s presidency over
the EU Council in order to hide the graf ti
drawings which have already been there for
quite a while. As part of the festival, the wall
is adorned with a pseudo-realistic drawing;
however, the Vilnius street logic operates under
its own agenda: shortly after wards, unauthorised
graf ti inscriptions reemerge on top
of the politically correct drawing initiated by
the festival. In other words, the street makes
its come- back and resumes its own speech at
a presumably faster pace, which is far more
complex and interesting by its social, political,
hierarchical and other relations than the
said attempt to represent it. A paradox can be
observed at this point: the street art tried to
be ‘only about a certain kind of art of a certain
street’ but the falsi ed public space failed to
match the expectations of the ruling structure.
The Young Painter’s Prize competition also
functions in the manner of any other representative
model, actively interacting in the
displayed space by simultane ously accepting
a certain responsibility in its respect. In this
case, the competition makes an attempt of observing
and promoting the motives and goals
of the young painters from the Baltics in the
space of a white cube. On the other hand, The
Young Painter’s Prize by itself functions as a
public, continuously produced space. Its functioning
and strategy are targeted at the goals
to identify the painting situation of a speci cally
de ned eld, resulting in a certain responsibility
of the competition and the subject participating
in it. Active observation of these public
spaces and their (self)development as well as
a re ective growth in them are important in
both organising the competition (festival) and
participat- ing in it or perceiving oneself as a
representative of the stage of Baltic painting.
In the attempt to re ect on the concept of space
and its relation to the subject, I would like to
recall and refer to the classical authors Michel
de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre who wrote
about space as a continuously produced social
for- mation. Both Michel de Certeau and Henri
Lefebvre speak about the practices of experiencing
space and the production of space. It is
appropriate to rely on the distinction between
place and space made by Michel de Certeau,
i.e. the denition of “space as a practiced place”:
Abou
the s
“thus, the street geometrically de ned by urban
planning is transformed into a space by walkers.
In the same way, an act of reading is the
space produced by the practice of a particular
place: a written text, i.e., a place constituted
by a system of signs”1. Michel de Certeau
also un- derlines the process determining the
production of space and the importance of the
subject in it. According to him, space derives
from mobile overlapping elements activating
it: “space occurs as the effect produced by the
operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize
it, and make it function in a polyvalent unity of
con ictual programs or contractual proximities.
On this way, in relation to place, space is like
the word when it is spoken, that is, when it is
caught in the ambiguity of an actualization,
transformed into a term dependent upon many
different conventions, situated as the act of a
present (or of a time), and modied by the transformations
caused by successive contexts.” In
The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau
describes everyday modes of action as
ac- tions that leave behind not only material
traces in space but also invisible ones.
It leads to the necessity of selfre ection of the
individual wishing to act in the public space
and together with it. After starting with Michel
de Certeau and the concept of space formulated
by him, it is now worthwhile to look at
another theorist, the aforementioned Marxist
Henri Lefebvre. This author separates three
types of space: mental space, social space and
physical space, which are in some way invisibly
linked with one another as each space inherits
cer- tain implications from the others. We cannot
talk about a pure mental space that is not
contaminated with social relations and physical
perceptions; in the same way, the mental
space is where we conceive and analyse social
events and physical surroundings; nally, the
physical space can be approached as a conse-

quence of mental and social spaces2. According
to him, social space spans the dichotomy
between public and private space; it is also
linked to subjective and phenomenological
space. Therefore, each public space is a complex
social structure based on rooted values
and the social production of meanings, determining
the perception of space. The thinker
argues that in respect of the subject, the entire
space is social, while social space is al- ways a
social product which is in the constant process
of creation, as a social structure and a mental
construction, asserting that the conception of
space as an experienced and simultaneously
produced phenomenon is usually determined
by external power structures, leading to the
passively experienced representation of space.
Such a passive representation of space comes
into play as soon as the subject eliminates
responsibility in respect of the space where he
acts. Naturally, it leads to confusion between
several occasionally opposing positions or
the absence of any position. It would imply
an unconditional conformity and loss of sensuality
in relation to the space itself. It is the
reason which often prevents us from seeing a
situation in the broader context and, as a rule,
provokes rather unusual and insigni cant decisions,
as seen from an unbiased viewpoint. As
regards public space, Lefebvre main- tains that
specialists, such as urbanists and scientists,
tend to assert an oficial representation of social
space as the one true space, a central reference
point to knowledge, government, and
authority. They privilege the element of conceived
space and repress the element of lived
space, thereby forcefully producing homogeneous
buildings, restricted social environment
and monotonous everyday life. The author contends:
“thus everybody consensually knows
what he is talking about when he refers to the
town hall, the post of ce, the police station, the
grocery store, the bus and the train, train stations,
and bistros – all the underlying aspects
of a social space as such. an arti cial edi ce of
hierarchically ordered institutions, of laws and
conventions.”4
Hence, instead of trying to reveal the relations
embedded in social space (by applying the
classical division of society), instead of concentrating
on the production of space and the
social relations underlying in this process – the
relations determining the contradiction that
derives from the production, thus re ecting a
contradiction between private property and
a social character of production – we nd ourselves
in traps by perceiving space as selfsuf
cient, as a constant or as something which simply
is. Public space also affects the subject as a
tool of thought and action, and the attempt to
comprehend the multiplicity of spaces made
productive in social practices requires us to
look back at a contradictory, con ictual and
political character of the production of space.
In respect of the individual, the continuous
production of space means control, power,
domination. According to the author, in opposition
to the representations of ‘true space’ are
representations of the truth of space which
include diverse, even divergent sociospatial
processes that are not authorized by the dominating
culture. Within our urban spaces opposition
and new representa- tions appear in the
form of the aforementioned street art, graf ti,
vandalism, protest rallies and street marches.
Nevertheless, each active subject is important
in respect of a new representation. Lefebvre
proposes him to shift from the passive conception
of things in space to the production of
space itself5.
To summarise the aforesaid, it can be stated
that when space is a practiced place and a
social product, we allow for space to emerge
by simultaneously identifying ourselves. When
space is perceived as a relationship between
things, the subject should apprehend his own
possibilities of space production and refuse
the role of a passive observer. This is where
the moment of responsibility comes into play:
each social space functions as a certain scenario
unfolding in the mind of the subject, which
is determined by external power structures
and functions existing in space. To be free
means a shift from the examination of space
as such to the observation of the process of
its production. Of course, from the point of
view of this text, the type of social space we
are referring to is of secondary importance: be
it the façade of the cinema theatre Lietuva in
Vilnius, the Young Painter’s Competition or the
Baltic painting stage with its range of problems,
etc. While observing space as a unity
of relation- ships among things, a possibility
for the subject to produce space arises in the
apprehension of the nature of relationships
among things and the likely shift of those
relationships. Every space mentioned above is
continually renewed, always created, unstable
and dynamic, and each individual is acting in
it and together with it. Those who are creating
in a speci c environment and together with
it should not raise the issue of existence of
space itself; instead, they should get to know
the modes of participation in it, its logic, and
its production. The vain denial of existence of
social space which is often driven by a wish to
act “differently” frequently leads to a constant
contradiction and attempt to solve the abstract
problems as if pertaining to the space itself as
a static component or a constant the raising
of which does not per se have a solid foundation,
the more so, it does not create a new
action model. Such a movement often leads to
a deadend. There are more movement trajectories
and creativity, when action is based on
acquaintance with the space where one grows
by conceiving it as a living unity of mobile
elements. But how does this text see artistic
creation in the context of the production of
space?
When writing about the functioning of artists
and their works, American author Annie Dillard6
points out that each universally accepted
interpretation of the world is a consensus
accommodating various “inventions”, which
reign until the consensus changes. Therefore,
we are again brought back to the phenomenon
of social space encompassing artists and their
works that originate from the use of humanly
meaningful spaces of the world (worlds) and
continue to function in the social space operating
as a product produced and controlled
by external power structures. When posing
a question whether artistic interpretations
obtain outside artistic contexts and whether
they make any sense to the outer world and
how they affect it, the author declares that
artistic interpretations are active and function
as much as they are related to the humanly
comprehensible order of the world and human
factors. Annie Dillard sums up her point by
asserting that the ctive ability to invent and to
order makes possible the imaginative conception
and the tools required for the apprehension
of the environment (the world); however,
everything only functions in our brains, which
are very well adapted for inventing and handling
complex abstractions.
Nevertheless, while existing in social space,
we do not have to lock ourselves up in it. To
act in the space and to be re ective in its respect
means the apprehension of oneself and
the space where one acts as one out of myriad
parts of the world, the observation of relationships
between things and their production as
well as the self-awareness that you are a part
of that world.
I have recently started thinking about it when
I met an artist who told me how he once tried
to render a colour he saw at night and he had
never seen before. According to him, for the
colour to come into being he had to necessarily
paint the whole picture and to create a
context for it; in other words, he had to diligently
use other colours to enable the nightly
colour to emerge in connection to them. Space
in this case was evaluated as a necessary precondition
and the means for the new colour to
appear.
1
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley,
Los Angeles, London: University
of California Press, 1984, p. 157
2
Andy Merri eld „A Socialist in Space“, In: Thinking Space, / Ed.
M. Crang, N. Thrift. London, New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 170
3
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space. Cambridge: Blackwell,
1991
4
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space. Cambridge: Blackwell,
1991, p. 224-225
5
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space. Cambridge: Blackwell,
1991, p. 179
6
Annie Dillard’s Living By Fiction (New York: Harper & Row,
1982)

A few remarks
and anecdotes
about
contemporary
painting
by art critic Edgaras Gerasimovičius / Lithuania / 2015
90
In an article that has already become a classic,
titled “Why are conceptual Artists Painting
Again? Because They Think It’s a Good Idea1”,
art critic Jan Verwoert talks about the paradoxes
of the state of contemporary painting
that are, in my view, particularly relevant for
today’s younger painters searching for creative
inspiration as well as nancial and symbolic motivation.
According to Verwoert, after the
wave of conceptual art in the 1950s, painting—though
it remained perhaps the main eld
of artistic creation—was forced to discover
itself anew based on traits completely uncharacteristic
of painting. A work’s formal characteristics,
its materiality in general, and an artist’s
technical contribution became matters of
third-rate importance. The question changed
from “how have the limitations of a given eld,
in this case painting, been reshaped in a speci
c artistic work?“ to “what means can be employed
to create an artistic work that would
ask the question: what are the limits to art in
general?” Such an ideological shift seemed to
have foreshadowed the death of painting—
something that has not, apparently, come to
pass: paintings today are perfectly capable of
re ecting the contemporary world without losing
their artistic relevance. History has, however,
left its traces. Today it seems inadequate
to judge painting as a separate eld of art with
its own characteristic traits, or to demand of
painting some consistent conceptuality since
gestures, colors, and gures cannot be translated
into words, no matter the bureaucratic
precision or order with which they may be
selected. In other words, after conceptual art,
a contemporary work of painting, even when
it maintains all the traits characteristic of
painting shaped during the period of high
modernism, will always be something more
than just painting. Painting thrives between
two extremes: hermetic isolation within the
traits of its own media and the use of conceptual
painting as a means to achieve general
creative goals. What does the relevance of contemporary
painting consist of? It could be variations
of these extremes, the forms of which
are determined not by esthetic criteria, but by
the functions of power: institutions, sources
of nancing, curatorial trends, the perception
of prestige, and countless other circumstances
A fe
that transform a painter into a kind of agent
within a wide network of possibilities. The relevance
of his painting is largely determined by
how developed and how active such a network
is.
Let me present an example that, in my view,
presents a perfect parody of such power
games. In Paolo Sorrentino’s lm The Great
and
Beauty there is a moment when the main character,
the writer Jep Gambardella, arrives to
conduct an interview with a young female performance
artist. The artist needs that interview
with Gambardella to appear in the press, while
Gambardella seems to need nothing from the
abou
artist. The performance goes something like
this: the naked artist kneels and gathers her
strength before running to hit the wall with her
head as hard as possible—which she succeeds
in doing. As she stands, the camera shows her
pubic hair painted red, with a hammer and
cont
sickle shaved into the hair. Looking at it quite
simply, a hammer and sickle shaved into pubic
hair could be understood as a politicized
public need to protect and continue life, while
smashing one’s head into a wall represents the
dif culties of politicized social life that lead
pain
us to individual self-de- struction. The performance
piece’s symbols, it seems, are easily
deciphered. As she gives her interview, the
artist turns out to be a supersensitive medium,
referring to herself in the third person and basing
her creative work on “vibrations”. Gambardella
xates on these “vibrations” that the artist
is completely unable to explain. The critic
annoyingly terrorizes the artist with repeated
requests to clearly explain what these vibrations
are, which the artist inevitably fails to do,
subsequently falling apart. In the next scene
we see Gambardella in the magazine’s editorial
of ce. From the conversation he has with his
editor it becomes evident that the completely
botched interview will appear in print as it was
seen by the lm’s audience. The scene shows
how comical a display of power can be when
it is veiled in the rhetoric of esthetic judgment
and authority.

1
Jan Verwoert, “Why Are Conceptual Artists Painting Again? Because
They Think It’s a Good Idea“, in: Afterall, autumn/winter
2005, London: The MIT Press, 2005.
2
Rainer Maria Rilke, to Clara Rilke 29 rue Cassette, Paris VI*, October
8, 1907 [online at: https://archive.org/stream/lettersofrainerm030932mbp/lettersofrainer-
m030932mbp_djvu.txt]
3
Ibid.
The parody of power in the art world is not a
new phenomenon. Irony was a part of Renaissance
era paragone—theoretical discussions
about the hierarchical position of different
elds of art. But irony blended with sadness
and hatred became most clearly evident in
the modernist era, when the targets of parody
became those participants in the world of art
who were unable to fully appreciate what the
new art said to them or changed within them.
One more anecdote from the period of modernism.
In letters to his wife Clara, Rainer Maria
Rilke writes about Paul Cézanne’s talent and
highlights two mundane, seemingly insigni
cant moments from the painter’s life: tired and
ailing in his old age, Cézanne walks from home
to his studio laughing at something known
only to himself, paying no attention whatsoever
to the children throwing pebbles at him; and
the words shouted out by Cézanne, at work in
his studio, after he is surprised by a rare visitor:
“Work without worrying about anyone and
become strong!” This moment from the artist’s
life is taken from the life stories of Claude
Lantier (modeled after Cézanne), a character
in The Work, a novel by Cézanne’s childhood
friend Émile Zola2.
In Cézanne’s sickly persona Rilke sees the
embodiment of painting’s paradox, which later
generations of artists stubbornly sought to reveal
in their work. On the one hand, a painting
hides nothing from the viewer—the entirety of
its brushstrokes is always open to the gaze of
the viewer. On the other hand, the information
about a painting’s structure, immortalized on
its surface, is not easily verbalized, while various
different details mysteriously expand and
change with any attempt to squeeze them into
one description. The translation of painting
into words is an exhausting, demanding, and
unsettling endeavor.
In his letters, Rilke mentions that one of his
most favorite pastimes was walking through
the galleries of Paris on a Sunday. On one such
walk he overheard a conversation between
several gentlemen looking at a portrait of
Madamme Cézanne. In the company of elegant
women, one of the men said enigmatically, as
if speaking about some crude portrait: “Il n’y a
absolument rien, rien, rien.” There is absolutely
nothing here. Nothing, nothing, nothing3.
As I look at the artistic works uploaded onto
the site of the Young Painter’s Prize, it is clear
that the great majority of them constitute
painting par excellence. We can assign them,
preliminarily, to a conservative and a more
experimental group. There are also works that
clearly only resemble painting, but that are
part of a greater project or effort. Some of
them are similar to each other, perhaps inspired
by the same artists, and as such could
possiblybe categorized by school. It would be
more precise to say that, rather then being
inspired by the same artists, they are in uenced
by the distorted and recreated representations
of works by such artists in the changing
world of uid imagery. Painting from nature has
apparently become only a means to develop
one’s technique to be later utilized in the
repainting on canvas of images that already
exist on screen. Though all of the artistic works
appear to be paintings, it would be particularly
dif cult to summarize them all as Painting. The
shortcomings of some of the works are the
strengths of others, and attempting to develop
evaluation criteria for each work from within
each piece would mean an appraisal not of
Painting, but of separate creative worlds—
worlds much larger than the images that have
settled on the surface of each canvas and that
resist reduction and attempts at generalization
of Painting.
Without a doubt, the competition’s prizes are
important achievements for any young artist.
But the most important recognition is the
attention of the curators who are sensitive to
painting’s subtleties, but who do their work
without categorizing artistic work into elds
and genres. Such attention can allow the presentation
of painting as something more than
just painting—alongside sculptures that may
resemble sculpture but that are not just sculpture,
or alongside lms that are similar to lms,
but are more than just that.

The
subjunctive
sexual mood
blossoms
allegedly
by art critic Aistė Marija Grajauskaitė / 2015
94
Today’s lively, young painting is, for me personally,
more than a canvas or an idea. I believe
it is an entire story—one that encompasses
more than the viewer sees or could possibly
see. It is intimacy. Something that always
brings forth a feeling—like a familiar smell
that transports you to a moment in the past in
which the person associated with that smell
once existed, yet in our memory there remains
only an emotion, not an image. I was overcome
by a similar sensation last autumn, while walking
through that mecca of modern art in
Vilnius, the Contemporary Art Centre (CMC):
I could see, but not everything. And I must
admit, I don’t know if painting would move me
so if not for that unsaid moment, that untold
story.
-
I—mindfulness—the canvas.
A game for three players.
-
Where I lead next is my game. On my canvas.
The three of us. I—Vilnius—You.
- - -
I am a young painter. I usually blend the kaleidoscopic
memory of facial features with the
curves and sculptures atop the churches of Vilnius,
with the light of the Cathedral Tower, with
shadows, adding to them the imagined sound
of the bell of St. Augustine’s Church eching
down the walls of the Old Town’s narrow
streets and— voilà—your portrait emerges.
-
For some inexplicable reason, I have never
seen a more painterly city than the prosaic Vilnius
I measure with each footstep. I’m not saying
I’ve traveled the entire world or have seen
every single city, but Vilnius has something
especially magical within it (admit it, you’re
nodding in agreement). I won’t even begin to
talk about how moving are its small streets and
each of their curves, or the concert of sounds
that emerges at night in the Old Town: old
doors, pointy high-heeled shoes, old musicians
playing in Kalvarijų Market… What I want to
tell you about this time is something that, in
all likelihood, is seen by me alone—because I
can’t know how much You can see without the
use of my eyes.
-
I have several of the portraits like the one I
mentioned at the start. Surely one for each
of my beloved. And no one can punish me
or write some awful text, teeming with criticism
(to which I, a painter, won’t know how
to respond, since my instrument is a thought
brush, and not a thought quill) because I create
these portrait images as I see them today. Or
because, even if the sun is shining, I will still
choose to see my subject against the
grayish-white sheets of a Vilnius sky.
-
„Žinot, o Jus reikia tapyti, kaip peizažą.“
“You know… You need to be painted like a
landscape.”
k.s.
For as long as I’ve lived in this city—a city
beloved by more than one nation, ravaged by
more than one blaze—I’ve associated most of
its churches with an event or a person. Some
of them remind me of how I fell in love with art
history, others how I fell in love with people,
still others with betrothal, and the rest—with
separation (from memories, people, things).
There are even some that only the guiding
hand of Dionysus can bring me to. It is then
that you understand that a feeling, like a
brushstroke, lies somewhere between magic
and masterpiece.

-
Ultimately, if we start down the twisting road
of thoughts, one could make the supposition
that, if anything has ever happened in the
Vilnius Old Town, than that event can be associated,
post factum, with one or another architectural
creation, because the city abounds
with them. If they are not directly in front of
you, then they are behind you, or just off to
the right. And if you dislike churches, then be
a good urbanite and remember the Orthodox
shrines or, if you are drawn to what is long
gone—the synagogues.
-
There are also those picturesque places in
Vilnius that reveal fantastic views. There is just
one problem though: self-respecting Vilnius
dwellers forget that they are, in fact, self-respecting
Vilnius dwellers, and thus rarely pay
a visit to these places. Very rarely. Hey, clever
Vilnius resident, would you like me to name
them for you? Not ashamed to encourage me?
As if you don’t already know what you’ll hear…
-
The Basilian Gates, painted in saffron yellow
(Povilas Ramanauskas, Dedikacija tapybai – A
Dedication to Painting)
-
Gediminas’ Grave Hill, engulfed in Celadon
greenery
(Tadas Jočys, Tonas – Tone)
-
The City Wall Bastion, resounding in black
pearl playfulness
(Alvīne Bautra, Bar kodas – Bar Code)
-
St. Casimir’s Chapel, captivating in elephant
gray
(Sanda Skujiņa, Fuetė – Fuet)
-
St. Anne’s Chapel and St. Francis of Assisi
Church, shimmering in the glow, twice each
day
(Dalia Juodakytė, Paslaptys – Secrets, a series
in six parts)
-
The Vilnius Old Town in Persian pink from St.
Saviour’s Hill
(Kristina Česonytė, Be pavadinimo – Untitled)
-
The silent paleness of St. Augustine’s Church,
like a grass widow
(Krista Dzudzilo, NEUTER III neuter 1)
-
Sts. Peter and Paul’s Church, almost white-hot
(Marta Ivanova, Be pavadinimo 4 – Untitled 4)
-
St. Catherine’s Church, hidden within motherof-pearl
and the steps of passersby
(Veiko Klemmer, Rayman)
-
The Bell Tower of St. John’s Church, powdered
in incarnate color, looking out on Vilnius below
(Alise Medina, Ji – She)
-
Was that enough to draw out of the grayness of
a long-spun and forgotten memory the recollections
of a first kiss? A first book? The first
dawn?...
-
I painted the last portrait of my Beloved in
front of the blood-red velvet pediment of the
Church of St. Philip and St. James. Apparently,
I toyed with this portrait the most. To put it
more precisely: I’m still toying with it. It was
this painting, into this monologue between
Vilnius and one thoroughly non-Vilnius face,
that I was able to incorporate the greatest
number of this city’s places, sounds, colors,
and smells—the greatest amount of Vilnius’
texture and form.
-
For six whole days, without nourishing my spirit
beast with any French eclairs or similar such
splendor, I was engaged in the painting process
with my entire being, or perhaps, damnit, I
myself became the painting process. Somehow
finding myself immersed in the night’s
cashmere gentleness, I laughed to myself as I
came to understand that Vilnius is a wonderful
city to fall in love. Not with someone else—but
with oneself in the image of another. With oneself
alongside another.
-
I’ve often woven that image into the city’s
panorama—a panorama that, unlike the one
you just pictured in your mind, is not seen
from some high point in the city. Usually, it’s a
panorama from a lower point of view (from the
“frog’s perspective”, as art terminology would
say), more or less as far off the ground as I am
tall, since that’s as far as my own panorama can
reach. About one meter and sixty nine centimeters.
-
Sunday is a sacred day in Vilnius. All of us, at
least in part, immerse ourselves into Stendhal’s
state of crystallization. Somewhere very
close to insanity, we try to slow the flow of
time instead of simply laughing in the face of
it. We sink into an excessive care for others,
forgetting that, in the end, everything will reverberate
in heartbeats on the flowing surface
of the Vilnelė River.
-
We leave the museum satisfied until, suddenly,
in the light of the sun, we remember the tickets
(but not the film) from a movie we liked,
the cover (but no quote) from our favorite
book, our grandmother’s hands (but not her
face), an old yellowed photograph from our
childhood (but not the smell of the sweater we
wear in the photo)—all of these are not works
of art on display, but just their brushstrokes,
hues, texture and materiality. From all of this
we craft together our own personal museum
to which we sell no tickets, and which we gift
to but a few people in our lives. This is the true
and cult-like exhibition of young, immortal
painting, whose opening is grand in the moment,
but forgotten in the flow of hours and
springtimes. And remembered again as we
seek to reconstruct the exhibition in the
autumn.
The
read through texts, I think to myself: I don’t
-
And sometimes, in moments like these, as I
care, let the great philosophers, art critics and
art historians fight it out amongst themselves,
defining definitions for their concepts, juggling
them for hours on end in an attempt at
conversation, trying to discover some innova-
subj
tive constant. If you would ask me today what
painting is for me, I would tell you that, first
and foremost, it is not form, color, or line. It is
something intangible, between rock, blues, and
classical music. Between a smile and smells.
Between black, dark blue, and red. Something
sexu
between chocolate, wine, whiskey, and Campari.
It is bitterness, the sky, curly hair, a flannel
shirt on skin chilled by the cold of night.
This is what I see when I look at young painting
(which is not only still alive, it is looking
back at those of us who think this way with a
blos
mocking gaze from the cafe across the street,
drinking a black espresso and paging through
Vogue in search of a new dress for a grandiose
homecoming).
alleg
I see a memory and future nostalgia, seemingly
-
created and designed by that someone who
painted just for You. I see it even with my eyes
closed, just standing in front of a work.
-
And the glory of it all — your image in me
-
because we are mortal Vilnius brushstrokes on
an enchantingly forgotten canvas

I Can’t -
But We Can
by painter, YPP’09 winner Andrius Zakarauskas / Lithuania / 2016
98

Dear fellow painter, I hereby begin this text
by claiming that you are not the one and only
cause of your painting. For me this assertion
acquires increasingly more importance and
clarity. We are affected by environment during
creative processes, therefore the resulting
artwork is an outcome of these influences as
well. Today, while speaking of my own art, I
cannot claim that a certain painting or drawing
belongs exceptionally to me. I am thankful for
everything I created to all those people I meet
and all these situations I was involved in. Thus
the resulting artwork is always a visual reflection
of all these thoughts, discussions, and
actions.
The theme of my current reflection is the
self-importance of a painter who participates
in the competitions such as this one. Participation
in such events gives us a chance to
interact, reflect on each other’s work and show
support, which is extremely important for every
aspiring artist.
A painter might think that she is doing all the
work while picking up a theme, coining an idea,
choosing tools, creating images or defining her
field of research. However the final result is
only finished thanks to this relation between
an artwork, a painter, and a viewer. A competition
allows us see all that and progress as
artists.
We might recall the soviet times our professors
were telling us about, when they felt it necessary
to share their work among themselves
in the circles of friends and colleagues, thus
supporting each other. They used to share
their comments actively, even without actually
encountering each other’s work directly. This
is why, in my view, Lithuania gave birth to so
many artist groups: Angis, 24, Keturios, Post
Ars, and many more… It means we can always
get the necessary feedback not only through
participating in the exhibitions, but during the
Can’t -
process of painting itself.
I was inspired to think about the fact that an
e
artist is
Can
not a sole author of what we call a
“final result” when I read an interview with
Glen Brown (published in ZOO Magazine)
whose reply to a question about “his paintings”
was that these paintings were not exactly
his. Brown was saying that during the creative
process an artist meets various people who
have something to say, something to share,
and something to discuss. This is how those
first viewers/participants get to touch upon
and intrude into the process of creation, thus
shaping the result accordingly. Therefore, the
result does not belong to the hands and mind
of a painter alone.
There is always a relation involved. I am absolutely
certain that even the smuggest artist
needs to be related to those around her, which
means that her work is shaped by this relation
as well.
Finally, nothing is possible without the divine
grace, as it gives me the strength to exhibit the
result. After all, we participate in art because
we all have hope. And what we receive as a
result is the confirmation of this hope. This is
what we should be grateful for.
For me, everything started from hunger – this
is how I call my sense of curiosity. Hunger is
a much wider term, it refers to the desire to
touch, explore, and devour the information
that hovers in the air around me. The hunger is
satisfied by sharing this gift – my talent, if you
will – with others.
I feel like I have to explore painting in order
to be touched by grace. I regard painting as a
way of thinking, seeing, and communicating. I
was not satisfied by mere exploration or play. I
wanted to share and communicate, I wanted a
feedback. This is why I decided to participate
in the 2009 Competition for the Young Painter’s
Prize.
I wanted to win. I was surrounded by all these
people close to me – tutors, colleagues, etc. At
that time I became to be interested in the
photo editing software, which reflected on the
result. I asked for an advice as to which artwork
to choose for the competition. After all, it does
matter how I see my work in the context of
contemporary painting. I think it is crucial to
share one’s work and discuss it. We must create
these dialogues both visually and verbally,
and it needs to be a sensual communication.
Not monologue, but dialogue. A good dialogue
is possible while reflecting on anything, including
art history, oneself, one’s environment.
Articulation is the most important thing. And I
learn how to do it every day. My hunger increases
with each challenge.
A willingness to participate in a competition
already presupposes a certain position. An
artist becomes stronger as she strengthens and
clarifies her position. Here I recall a saying that
one needs courage to paint. One needs courage
not only in order to paint, but also in order
to ask oneself the question ‘why?’ Not because
of some nostalgia for painting, but because
one needs to understand why one should paint
and perceive the world as an artist today.
The Young Painter’s Prize is a form of communication.
We all have an opportunity to communicate,
share our findings, ask questions and
have a good time in this gathering.
By submitting my artwork for this competition I
ask for attention, I want to be heard, and I want
to be challenged.
This gathering of painters from all three Baltic
States significantly widens the context and
unites us all. We might start thinking about our
uniqueness as representatives of our countries.
This uniqueness is possible through the
efforts to reflect on our traditions, our teachers
and those close to us, those who help us
breathe.
I am happy that the competition covers all
three Baltic countries and I hope that the area
of its coverage will expand. In order for this
to happen, all of us – organisers, participants,
committee members, and sponsors – need to
support each other. I can’t do it on my own, but
we all can do it together.

Welcome to
the Dollhouse:
On Painting
and Perspective
by writer and art critic, currently the international editor at Artforum Kate Sutton / 2016
104
Though titled The Façade, a façade is precisely
what is missing in Vita Opolskytė’s 2015
painting, which peels back the outer layer of a
house to reveal a cross-section of its interiors.
The rooms are stacked like shoeboxes, with
the walls and floors rendered in the rumpled
manner of old cardboard. The architecturally-induced
wooziness is enhanced by the stark
contrast of the dazzlingly-patterned wallpaper
against the murky warmth of the wood paneling,
or the quiet pauses of the plainly-painted,
pastel walls. The composition is built along a
central zigzagging spine, which starts at the
very bottom edge of the canvas, with what appears
to be a stepping-stone footpath to what
might be a door, had the façade not been pared
away. The line continues, reversing its course
up the set of banistered stairs lurching into the
second floor, where a spindly ladder then leads
back the other direction through an opening in
the floor up to the attic. The ladder’s tip comes
to an end immediately in front of a canvas,
which is positioned so that its contents remain
blocked to the viewer. This unaccommodating
angle adds another slap at that “façade” from
the title, as yet another visual curiosity denied.

When surveyed more broadly, Opolskytė’s
paintings of domestic interiors tend to enclose
their viewers into intimate (if not uncomfortable)
positions not only in relation to the furniture
or other figures sharing the space, but also
in relation to the space itself. Elements like
patterned throw rugs, kitschy flower paintings
or bulky armchairs take on personal characteristics,
as their presence migrates from one
canvas to another, suggesting that these rooms
are consistent features of a single house. The
scale and perspective of the images reinforces
this idea, suggesting the viewer is peering
into a dollhouse. This impression is seconded
not only by the toy-like rendering of the human
bodies, but by the occasional, impossible
viewpoints, perspectives that would have been
inaccessible to a human figure moving about
an actual house. In this sense, the artist takes
on the role of a kind of domestic drone, driven
stir-crazy within its interior and thus pushed
to provide ever more inventive angles on the
objects it surveils.
And yet, Opolskytė’s paintings resist a mechanical
reading through their sheer lack of precision,
the perspectival swooning that imbues
each painting. Traditional linear perspective is
implied through the arrangement of the floors,
walls, and ceilings, but the lines that constitute
these arrangements are given to tilting, bulging
or veering just barely askew, so that the
edges appear rounded off. While the spaces
may fit together conceptually, visually they
are studies in disjuncture. For instance, the tip
of the ladder may peer into the attic, forging
conceptual continuity between the second and
third floors of the house, but visually the forms
of this ladder are separated, with the attic presented
as if slanted slightly down towards the
viewer, like a dinner plate offered for approval.
The disjuncture is all the more extreme in the
oil on canvas, The Guest Room. Talks about
Migraine and Velázquez (2015). The painting
depicts a room whose edges are only just
visible on the second floor of The Façade. The
walls are the same deep hunter green with the
same wooden parquet floor and a throw rug,
edged in a red-and-blue checkerboard pattern.
In The Guest Room, this space is rendered almost
illegibly. The painting assumes an aerial
view, and the throw rug, dueling armchairs and
a side table are all depicted accordingly. But
within this basic frame, the walls have been
collapsed into almost an extension of the parquet,
so that the maudlin floral image on the
left edge of the canvas reads like a welcome
mat, rather than a wall-mounted painting. On
the opposite edge, a wardrobe, dresser and
nightstand are placed side-by-side along the
floor, instead of lining the wall. Perhaps the
most disorienting thing about this space, however,
are the two figures at the bottom edge of
the image. The pair is rendered from the waist
down, one in a blue dress, the other in dark
slacks. The rest of their bodies are concealed
under the parquet, as if paper dolls slipped
through a notch in a sheet of paper. The question
left is not who they are, but rather where
they are and how they got there.
This is where the title of the painting helps
lend legibility. A conversation about Velázquez,
for instance, immediately conjures ties to Michel
Foucault and his masterful reading of the
perspectival flourishes tucked within Diego
Velázquez’s 1656 masterpiece, Las Meninas.
But in this case, the true clue to Opolskytė’s
painting rests in the first subject of these
“talks”: the migraine. Those who suffer from
these debilitating headaches have reported
that episodes are sometimes accompanied by
bouts of visual flushing, moments when one’s
perception of the space around them gives
way to distortion. This phenomenon has also
been observed – independently of migraines–
in young children, whose accounts of their
disorientation are often dismissed as mere
indulgences of powerful imaginations. Perhaps
for this reason, the disorder has been dubbed
“Alice in Wonderland Syndrome,” though it
is also known as “Lilliputian Hallucinations,”
or, in a less literary incarnation, “Todd’s Syndrome.”
In her practice, Opolskytė openly acknowledges
the tie between her particular constructions
of perspective and the symptoms of Alice
in Wonderland Syndrome. These symptoms
cannot be translated into a photograph nor recorded
through digital means (yet), as they exist–
are produced, really – only within the mind
of the artist. To be communicated, they require
the flexibility of painting, as a medium capable
of intervening between fact and fiction, reality
and imagination.
As a genre, painting is accorded a peculiar
vulnerability. It must constantly be defended,
whether from ideological dictates or religious
sanction; the onset of photographic technologies
and mechanical reproduction; or now, a
digital age that has eaten away at our visual literacy
as a society. Perhaps, “eaten away” is not
the right verb. Rather, it has altered our strategies
at reading and comprehending images.
The distinction between an image and a painting
(or, by extension, the painting-as-image
and image-as-painting) has become an critical
one. When photography first emerged as a
viable technology for the mass reproduction
and dissemination of images, it gave birth to
what Walter Benjamin, in his watershed 1936
essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction,” termed the “aura” of authenticity.
In short, it made “the original” – that
is, the painting – matter. Benjamin’s conceit
still holds true, even if the term “aura” is now
more popularly associated with the hoodoo
practices of crystals, acupuncture and reflexology.
The link holds as long as the aura retains
its position as part-spiritual, part-speculative–
a wholly psychological phenomenon. In this
sense, it is the attribute of painting that allows
it to exist as an interloper between the worlds
of fact and fiction.
More than two decades before Benjamin’s
essay, Kazimir Malevich had declared painting
dead through his Black Square. An effective
eulogy, true, but premature to say the least.
Painting’s continued prevalence has been an
art historical enigma for the better half of the
last century (particularly to those who refuse
to assign import to painting’s status as a commodity
object.) The currently canonized narrative
holds that over the course of the twentieth
century, Western painting underwent an entire
life cycle in regards to its relation to representation.
Purportedly “freed” of the burden of
Wel
representation by the proliferation of photography
(as Benjamin’s essay tracks), Western
painting as a genre supposedly set off into the
wilds of our collective id, reveling in an abstraction
of forms whose every stroke was read
as an act of resistance, a slap in the face of
the
Western painting’s historical fidelity to its subject
matter. As this same narrative still follows,
abstract concepts like feelings or emotions
no longer assumed the guise of allegory; they
could play out in great gestural swoops of oil
on canvas, soft dabs of egg tempera or brashly
applied acrylics.
On P
and
image of image-making. The canon shifted into
Peculiarly, this bounty and boundlessness of
abstraction began to broadcast its own limitations.
Towards the mid-1960s, abstraction
began to read as a representation of itself, an
a more conceptual mode, trading in an attempt
at originality in favor of dismantling the mechanisms
of making pictures. With every slash to
the canvas or stenciled semiotic flourish, the
painting increasingly gave way to image.
Today we find ourselves afloat in visual
streams of data and social media, which have
trained us not only to consume images at a
certain clip, but to produce them already in
such a way that they are already embedded
within this framework. In answer to the images
around us, we are no longer goaded in delivering
Foucauldian dissections of placement
and power; rather, our responses have been
streamlined to a more immediately digestible
set of options: thumbs-up, thumbs-down,
smiley face, sad-face. Indeed, under a certain
spin, we are living in an age of complete faith
in the image’s ability to communicate, with
the rise of emojis taking us back to the era of
pictograms, a linguistic technology that pivots
around the notion that a picture could be
worth a thousand words.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, however,
the emoji negates roughly nine hundred
and ninety of them. Even with Apple’s recent
much-heralded expansion of international
emoji vocabulary, increasing the diversity of
age, gender and skin tone of the available
smiley faces, for most users, “dancing” still
involves salsa steps in a ruffled red dress. To
capture the true multitude of experiences that
could be considered “dancing,” or, for that
matter, the rush of emotions or impulses associated
with this activity, requires a wider representational
syntax. When it comes to communication,
convenience still cannot trump
comprehensiveness.
Technology hasn’t just affected the reception
of work. It is at the core of its production. Lack
talent? Outsource, or apply a filter, whose aesthetics
come pre-ascertained. When so-called
easel painters (for who has time for an easel?)
arise on the scene today, the trend and trope
is to read them as relics, fanciful throwbacks
the way pour-over coffee, artisanal cheeses
and “slow food” can now be considered all the
rage. This lens of nostalgia is inherently tied
to innovation. Art history is, first and foremost,
a narrative, and a narrative depends on plot.
What Benjamin may have unwittingly unleashed
when lauding the original was a priority
of primacy. Accordingly, we have produced
a canon as a series of firsts, ignoring aesthetics
for ingenuity.
What was lost in this process – or rather, covertly
discounted as naïve – was the psychological
weight of the aura of painting. Before
I proceed further, let me say up front that
photography can be a laborious, painstaking
process, similarly weighted with psychological
endeavor. Take an artist like the young Siberian
photographer Danila Tkachenko, who has been
known to wait for hours in the snow for just the
right light conditions, so that his photographs
of abandoned military or industrial objects
emulate the blurred surfaces of watercolors.
But there is another, arguably more dominant
mode of photography – sooner image-making–
that feeds into the stream of selfies, sunsets
and food pornography. In this mode, the image-maker’s
investment is minimal. If it isn’t
the right lighting, just adjust the brightness or
add a filter. These images are caught up in a
concern beyond the immediate aesthetic; they
are elaborated emojis, constructed to communicate
an experience as an extension of self. I
have this. I have been here. I have seen this.
The physical and psychological investment of
painting affords another possibility for spelling
out one’s self. Not just “I have seen this,”
but “this is how I see this.” And again, here I
should qualify that certain types of painting
can also undoubtedly operate in the mode
of image-making described above, but as a
representational technology, painting has the
inherent ability to do more, simply out of the
necessity of having to build an image from
scratch, rather than mechanically appropriate
it into the frame.
In this context, it is an easy thing to fetishize
the act of painting. The image of the (typically
white, typically male, typically European)
painter in his studio, fingers reeking of turpentine
and linseed oil, runs deep in our shared
cultural imagination. This got a tweak in the
twentieth century, with so-called action painting
– painting as performance, which shifted
emphasis on the production process. In this
reading, the marks left on canvas are reduced
to witness, evidence of a choreography acting,
but no longer present. This trend is still visible
today. If anything, the pronouncements of
painting’s most recent demise have been met,
rather improbably, by a resurgence of painting
on the international market. Much of the
focus of this market has been on a wedding
of concerns both aesthetic and conceptual, a
prolonged attempt to question the means of
painting by experimenting with methods and
techniques of application, be it a fire extinguisher,
a motorcycle or a digital printer. While
these works – disparagingly nicknamed “Zombie
Formalism” by American critic (and pop
painter) Walter Robinson – may have revived
the branding of originality, they do so at a
direct deficit of the psychological imprint, the
aura of the experience of the painting.
This isn’t to throw painting into opposition
with technological advances. If anything, as
our technology develops, it allows us to convey
new experiences and incorporate them
into acts of both image-making and painting
alike. Digital photography, virtual or augmented
realities do not preclude nor supplant
painting, but they can act on our perception as
it is communicated through painting, just as an
affliction like Alice in Wonderland Syndrome
can manifest itself within Opolskytė’s paintings.
Think of it as applying a psychological
filter, rather than a technical one.
The breadth of possibility presented by these
psychological filters is what fuels the Young
Painter Prize. By limiting the medium (though
by no means limiting the technique of its
application or its content), the competition
expands to show painting’s true range, from
Opolskytė’s interiors to the brash impasto,
near-sculptural quality of Maria Ader’s work,
the Surrealist-tinged fantasy landscapes of
Asta Stasionytė or the expressionistic portraits
of Jurcikas Jonas. While speaking in different
syntax, visually, these works are united by a
shared psychological imprint, the physical investment
of time and imagination that must go
into each canvas.

Today
painting media
are more
visible
than ever
Is painting dead? This idea has been declared
all over the world for so many years that even
talking about it is boring. The competition of
medium was intense both in the 1800s, when
photography emerged and at the end of the
20th century–the beginning of the 21st century,
in the era of prosperity of contemporary
and conceptual art. Painting media was declared
obsolete. However, such a struggle of
the medium is absolutely meaningless. Painting
was and is one of the main and leading
forms of art medium. The world’s largest museums
constantly supplement their collections
with impressive paintings of famous artists
as well as new ones, and painting exhibitions
receive extremely positive texts in the professional
press that analyse the topic of return of
painting media and its longevity.
Today painting media is more visible than ever.
Without trying to diminish any of other media,
I believe that today, compared to painting,
conceptual art seems elitist, incomprehensible
and invisible. In any case, both traditional
painting and conceptual art are levelling up.
As a result, we are increasingly seeing paintings
in exhibitions of contemporary conceptual
art, and artists who create with the use of
traditional techniques more freely interpret
painting media by adopting conceptual art
ideas. Paradoxically, a tendency is becoming
increasingly evident for artists who have built
their careers in the field of contemporary art to
return to this so-called traditional technique.
In any case, the Young Painter Prize is not
aimed to persuade the younger generation that
painting media is superior. Our goal is to create
an opportunity for young artists of all areas
engaged in painting to be noticed, encouraged
and appreciated. For more than a decade I was
myself and still am an active observer of the
art field, and I clearly see the difference. Many
things have changed in a decade. Starting from
the institutions, buyers of pieces of art, the
attitude of older generations of artists towards
young creators, and to the most important
point - the courage and self-confidence of
young, curious and creative people.
Thanks to our project, young artists get the
opportunity to develop and represent their art
in the presence of people of most importance
in the world of art. The YPP offers support - a
monetary prize, an art residency and an opportunity
to organize a personal exhibition. This
is a package of opportunities. It depends only
on the very artist himself/herself how his/her
career as this of an artist will develop. I am
glad that the majority of the artists who did
not necessarily win the main prizes in the YPP
project have made great use of our platform -
professional art galleries have started to cooperate
with them, they are invited to important
group exhibitions, their works have found their
places in both museum and private collections.
For young developers, this is a huge benefit -
both a moral incentive to continue their work
and a great record in their biographies, creating
their own careers as an artist.
by art critic and curator Julija Dailidėnaitė / Lithuania / 2018
108

Changes in the
Everyday
practices in the
Estonian Art
Scene
Overview of the Institutional Patterns
An overview of the young generation of Estonian
artists would be impossible without a
reflection on how the local art scene benefited
from the general changes at the institutional
level. There have been significant changes
during the past six years (although their origins
go back further in time)—a period during
which a new generation of artists, curators,
critics, directors and project managers have
emerged. In contrast to the previous times,
their roles are often intertwined and their
everyday work is directed outwards, toward
achieving international cooperation and acknowledgement.
The Estonian Contemporary Art Development
Center (ECADC), a noteworthy newcomer in the
local art scene, started its work in 2012 under
the direction of Karin Laansoo. Although at first
the aims of ECADC seemed similar to those
of the Center for Contemporary Arts Estonia
(CCAE, since 2013 directed by Maria Arusoo,
the commissioner of the Estonian Pavilion at
the Venice Biennale since 1999, and a co-commissioner
of the Baltic Triennial since 2016),
ECADC proved itself to be active on an even
bigger scale. The ECADC has initiated a significant
part of large scale international projects,
including Outset Estonia, Estonian Pavillion
Without Walls at the Performa Biennial 2017,
the Curatorial Program for Research, and Gallerist
Master Course. This activity has played a
big part in the careers of many Estonian artists
mainly still in their late 20s, 30s and early 40s,
as they were introduced to the international
audiences.
Apart from ECADC and CCAE, which both have
played an important role in the professionalisation
and internationalisation of the Estonian
art scene, there are number of exhibition spaces
that deserve mentioning. Tartu Art Museum
(Tartmus) managed to cause quite a stir with
their provocative and socially engaging exhibitions
program during the period of 2013–2017
when the curator and critic Rael Artel was
director of the museum. The transformative
aim towards producing, exhibiting, collecting
and popularising local and international contemporary
art has been important for both
Tallinn Art Hall and Contemporary Art Museum
of Estonia (EKKM). Since 2015, Tallinn Art Hall
is directed by Taaniel Raudsepp who is also a
member of an artist group Visible Solutions
LLC. Marten Esko and Johannes Säre are directors
of EKKM since 2016, with Säre also being
active as an artist himself. Artists taking over
the leading roles in the large scale projects has
been a growing trend for a while already. Other
examples include Tallinn Photomonth Contemporary
Art Biennial (under the management of
Laura Toots, an artistic director since 2017)—a
current leading international biennial in Estonia—and
the Estonian Photographic Art Fair,
the only art fair in the local scene (under the
direction of Helen Melesk since 2010).
A pilot project started by the Estonian Artists’
Union together with the Ministry of Culture is
another important development that causes
polemic reactions in the media. This project
aims to provide artists, writers, curators and art
critics with a monthly wage that enables them
to dedicate themselves to creative work for a
longer period of time (the wage is paid out for
the period of three years)a significant attempt
to contribute to the development of Estonian
culture. The Artists’ Wage Project is definitely
one of the most significant steps towards securing
a more autonomous and socially stable
life for freelance artists, curators and writers in
Estonia.
by art critic, independent curator and art producer Merilin Talumaa / Estonia / 2018
110

The Young Scene
As noted above, today it is not uncommon to
be managing and marketing different projects
while also being active as a practicing artist.
Precarious working conditions and project-based
lifestyle while producing sitespecific
works and organising exhibitions usually don’t
have anything glamorous about them. New
works are often produced in different places
around the world and, due to their fragile
nature, often break during shipping. A lot of
artworks are still being produced under poor
conditions: underpaid or free labour, lack of
institutional help during stages of preparation
and promotion of exhibitions, not to mention
the need to produce a lot of new works within
a short timeframe with a low budget and without
any long-term vision. These traits have become
apparent in the practices of most of the
Estonian artists born in the 1980s and early
1990s—the so-called ‘millennial generation.’
The first thing that comes to mind when trying
to describe the trends among the younger
generation of Estonian artists is their constant
migration between different exhibitions and
residencies which is explained by the prevailing
desire to be part of the international art
world. All of the aforementioned institutions
have been playing a big role in this phenomenon
by maximising the international cooperation
and promoting the Estonian artists. Over
time, this resulted not only in the fragmentation
of art production, but also in the fusion
between different cultural references, techniques
and materials. This is especially evident
in the work of Kris Lemsalu, one of the most
influential young Estonian artists who is also
currently gaining a worldwide prominence. Her
nomadic lifestyle bearing a wide range array of
cultural influences is clearly expressed in her
works as well as her personal appearance.
Eventually the nomadic and precarious working
conditions have become part of the everyday
practices of the whole Estonian millennial
generation and have started to reflect on their
creative work. This does not necessarily mean
that their art has become homogenous but
rather that its production became more complex.
Young artists tend to prefer to work in
bigger teams and in various locations, produce
complex largescale installations, test different
knowledge bases and material skills, thus also
increasing their geographical visibility. This is
also made possible by residencies around the
world that provide access to well equipped
studios and professional networks. All this in
turn has greatly influenced artistic media such
as painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics
and textile design—e.g., the installations are
now becoming increasingly site-specific.
Generally the Estonian millennial art practice
seems to be showing the signs of the DJ
mixing culture where different mediums and
techniques are intertwined in order to create
mesmerising new works. When describing the
young generation of Estonian painters like
Kristi Kongi, Merike Estna, Mihkel Ilus, one
notices a mixture of painting, textile and sculptural
works dissolving into a painting in an
‘expanded field.’ Estna and Ilus are well known
for their performance practices using painting
as a set-up for social stage—a form of a collaborative
act intended to bring the audience
closer to their works. In Estna’s performances,
painting might not only take a form of a dressing
gown, but also that of a drink, a cake or a
carpet, thus creating new ways of perceiving
the layered nature of a painting. Kongi’s largescale
room installations provide a sensitive
ground to new ways of perceiving painting as
something fragile and ephemeral—documentation
is often the only thing that remains after
the performances. The process of the disappearance
of an artwork is thus turned into a
playful and captivating experience.
There are a yet another couple of aspects that
distinguish the visual language of the young
Estonian artists from that of their foreign
colleagues—namely, a certain nostalgia and
the raw post-soviet aesthetics. Most of these
Estonian artists spent their childhood and
teenage years in the 1990s—a controversial
historical period of remarkable social and political
changes. It is notable that these changes
are also prevalent in the art of the millennials
as well. Mihkel Maripuu, whose paintings have
been linked to the postinternet culture and
underground music scene, was one of the first
artists to start mixing the cosmopolitan anonymity
with the trashy East European aesthetics.
In Alexei Gordin’s paintings, videos and
performances, the robust abandoned ruins and
Soviet architectural forms are imbued with a
post-soviet nostalgia.
In conclusion, the contemporary Estonian art
scene is currently experiencing a number of
changes. Art institutions are run by the new
generation of curators, directors and managers
whose roles are often intertwined. The goal
of their work is to make Estonian art scene
visible internationally and to help artists with
different aspects of art and exhibition production.
On the other hand, their everyday life and
work have also become more layered, and the
production of artworks has become more fragmented
due to constant travelling and working
in big teams. Altogether, the young generation
of Estonian artists is lead to create layered and
often ephemeral artworks and exhibitions.
In the near future, one of the most important
challenges for the growth and viability of the
artist community will be sustainability in terms
of labour and the availability of social and
financial resources.

A decade
of young art
by art critic Justina Augustytė / Lithuania / 2018
114
Today Lithuanian visual arts scene is noticeably
more active, and it owes its revival to a
growing community of young artists. Over
the last decade the young have been actively
contributing to the dynamics, diversity, and
livelihood of the contemporary art field. The
public sphere has now become increasingly
saturated with the discussions showcasing the
impact that the young artists are having on our
culture, analysing the difficulties they have
to face, and offering solutions to make their
creative careers easier. It is only natural that
the ten year anniversary of an annual Young
Painter Prize (YPP) Award calls for a retrospective
overview. Let us try to sum up the creative
successes and challenges of the Lithuanian
young art during the last decade.
Young Artists and their Challenges
Let us attend to the notions first. Today the
use of generational breakdowns belongs to a
rather obsolete and inert tradition: the distinction
between the ‘young’ and ‘old’ generations
is just too vague as far as artistic practices are
concerned. However, the emphasis on the category
of ‘young artist’ remains relevant both
in art and in cultural politics. Formally, this
category included artists that fell into a clearly
defined age group the upper limit of which is
usually 30–35 years. While such a strict categorisation
benefits bureaucratic processes, it
remains highly problematic. Usually the challenges
that a lot of artists have to face at the
early stages of their careers are not related to
their age. Which is why the expression ‘young’
sometimes gets substituted with ‘up-andcoming,’
thus eliminating the age criterion
altogether and focusing on a certain stage of
an artist’s career instead. However this question
has now lost its relevance. Despite all the
inconsistencies, the term ‘young artist’ became
a convenient and conventional way of referring
to an art professional who is about to start her
career as an independent artist.
Apart from the discoveries and inventions,
there are also challenges and risks that the
up-and-coming artists have to face. Artists find
themselves particularly vulnerable right after
their graduation: no longer protected by their
student status, with their work still largely unknown,
without any ties with galleries and institutions,
they have to struggle to get noticed
and find their place in the art world. This circularity
of their situation can be well illustrated
by the statement “There is no exposure without
prominence, but there is no prominence
without exposure”—an observation made by
the organisers of ‘Zugzwang’, an international
show of the Baltic art held in 2010. Thus young
artists are an extremely precarious and vulnerable
category—they are often in need of a
‘proper’ help with boosting and shaping their
careers. Here it is important to note that institutional
and non-institutional initiatives play
the most important roles in supporting young
artists and facilitating their integration into the
art market.
The relationship between artists and institutions
is often complicated. It was only recently,
when the very use of the expressions ‘young
artists’ and ‘institutions’ in the same sentence
was still causing tensions. Institutions used
to be associated with the established—and,
consequently, older—authors, which was why
being a ‘young artist’ implied an alternative
opposition to the institutions. Institutional
mentality and the creative freedoms of the
young generation seemed utterly incompatible.
Contrary to the institutionalised authors,
the young thus remained largely invisible to
both professional art critics and wider audiences.
In order to compensate for the lack of
their institutional representation, young artists
were prone to gather into various groups,
thus sharing their burdens of organising group
exhibitions.
There are various governmental strategies
aimed at supporting young artists, which is
among the top priorities of the national cultural
policy, and the Program for the Support

of Young Artists approved by the Government
of the Republic of Lithuania in 2003 envisions
several forms of that support. The governmental
initiative is thus a significant step towards
providing young artists with the necessary
support, however a full assessment of the
Program would require a separate analysis.
It is worth mentioning that, for a number of
years now, individual and educational stipends
as well as nationally funded residencies have
been significant factors in helping the young
artists in their daily lives, increasing their
mobility and productivity, and thus proving to
be a significant way of fostering the creative
output of the young. The young creatives—
particularly those who manage to rise into
prominence in the early stages of their careers
and demonstrate their contribution to the
national culture—are awarded by the Culture
Ministry of the Republic of Lithuania with
The Debut of the Year Award and the Young
Creatives Award. Involvement of the private
capital is often regarded as a more significant
and more efficient way to directly contribute
to the young art scene. Acknowledgement by
the big national institutions might be more
significant, but due to their limited funds they
are less able to substantially contribute to the
careers of the young. Therefore the fact that
the governmental institutions of the art field
are joined by private sponsors and buyers can
only result in wider professional networks,
increased collaborative possibilities, as well as
a more dynamic and competitive art market.
The traditions of art collecting and sponsorship
began only a few years ago. Because of their
unstable careers, young artists used to be seen
by art collectors as a risky investment. Thus
it is no surprise that both private and institutional
capital are in need of encouragement.
Lithuanian art community is relatively small,
and even private art market often requires
support from the State funds, which is understandable—any
cases of cultural support, even
on the level of private initiatives, should be
considered as part of the national cultural policy.
As far as young art is concerned, concerted
efforts and multiple sources of investment can
only lead to the best results.
The Young Painter Prize: Changes
The Young Painter Prize was conceived precisely
as an initiative that consolidates various
participants of the art field, and it proved to be
one of the most successful non-institutional
projects of that kind. Notably, its birth coincided
with the financial crisis of 2009 that affected
all aspects of the country’s life, obviously
including its culture sector as well. In order
to bring their project to life, the organisers—
painter Vilmantas Marcinkevičius art theorist
Julija Dailidėnaitė—had to face difficult conditions.
While institutions were busy adopting
the austerity measures, the organisers had to
look for the alternative ways to reinvigorate
the art market. The nation-wide financial slowdown
has also led to the formation of trans-institutional
cooperation and non-institutional
initiatives. When the art market started stagnating,
a relatively cheap work of the young
artists proved to be a good source of interest
for both art collectors and the general public,
thus showing a potential for reinvigorating
the art market. The organisers had ambitious
goals: to showcase the most promising and
outstanding young (younger than 30) painters;
introduce the young artists to a wide public;
and help art collectors, managers and curators
discover new talents. After making a modest
start in 2009 with the applications from
28 Lithuanian artists, in 2011 the YPP Award
turned international after it opened its doors
to the young painters of Latvia and Estonia.
Over a period of a decade, the YPP Award grew
into a one of the biggest annual events in the
Lithuanian art scene.
The YPP Award remains one of the most successful
examples of both institutional and
non-institutional collaboration between the
governmental and private sectors. By taking
part in the Award Committee and making efforts
to promote and ensure the continuity of
YPP, the institutional partners are also contributing
to the buildup of its so-called ‘symbolic
capital,’ while sponsors and patrons are taking
care of YPP’s material basis. The Award winners
are motivated both financially (in the form
of cash prizes, residency invitations, and solo
shows) and symbolically (through prominence
and exposure). While young artists often tend
to take their accomplishments with a pinch of
salt, they also admit that acknowledgement is
always pleasant and inspiring. Therefore art
competitions are regarded not only as sources
of financial incentives but also as a way to
build an identity and become acknowledged
by the art world professionals, the press, and
the general public. For an up-and-coming
artist, publicity and promotion are among the
most important career catalysts. Thanks to
today’s technological advancements, artists
are able to publicise and share their work
via online galleries and social networks thus
reaching out to their audiences independently.
However most of the up-and-coming artists
are lacking in the capacity to present their
work professionally. Meanwhile the YPP Award
receives a wide press coverage and dominates
both public and private discourses among the
art professionals, and it certainly contributes
to the popularisation and promotion of young
art. The participants get noticed by the art
critics, curators, and gallerists, while their work
is promoted and contextualised by the professional
press. Apparently, the Award had also
brought the question of young art back into
discourses of art theory as well. Every year the
YPP-inspired polemics leads us to rethink the
status of a young artist, identify the trends in
painting, and examine the individual aspirations.
The YPP Award had also contributed to the rehabilitation
of painting as such. In the context
of contemporary art, painting has been regarded
as somewhat secondary: too old-fashioned,
too traditional, not conceptual enough. The
popularisation of young painters eventually
led to the contemporary painting itself becoming
popular again. The Award had demonstrated
that contemporary painting can be just as
important a participant in the contemporary
art scene as any other discipline, and it can
be innovative and relevant without loosing
touch with the tradition. Art theorists, artists,
and viewers find the geography of the Award
particularly advantageous as it allows them
to discover the specificities that are not only
national, but also regional. This way the capital
city gets to know more about the lesser known
artists from other towns, while Lithuanians get
A de
more acquainted with Latvians and Estonians,
and vice versa. The artists themselves thus
have an opportunity to meet each other and
develop creative partnerships that often end
up in group shows and successful collaborations.
Apart from making the young artists vis-
of yo
ible to the art professionals and cultural press,
the YPP Award also performs an educational
mission. In their determination to bring the
art of painting to a wide audience through the
use of understandable language and attractive
format, the Award organisers are staying true
to a general tendency towards the democratisation
of culture that aims to oppose the image
of the art world as a hermetic, elitist, and
self-referential sphere. While the forms of this
democratisation remain a matter of an ongoing
debate, one thing is sure: it is already having
an undoubtedly positive effect on the visibility
of the young artists. Every year the Award
becomes eagerly awaited for by both artists
and gallery-goers—in fact, it has now turned
into one of the most popular and most visited
annual events of the Lithuanian art world.
One would like to believe that the project will
justify its international status and will find its
audiences in other countries as well.
The last decade saw a variety of participants.
Some of them have made it to the YPP finalist
shows only to fade into an oblivion afterward.
However the majority of the finalists managed
to remain on track, and their names keep
reappearing in the finalist lists year after year.
Quite a few of them have not only outgrown
their ‘young artist’s’ clothes, but brought their
art to a new level and joined the ranks of the
most influential Lithuanian painters. Their
artworks are now noticeable in all the major
events of contemporary art across the whole
Baltic region, and their names appear even in
a global context of contemporary art fairs and
competitions. And, of course, in addition to
the ‘basis’ of the established names, each year

ings some new discoveries and surprises.
The history of the YPP Award can thus be seen
as a concise history of contemporary Lithuanian
painting.
The Next Decade: Possibilities
The YPP Award was conceived during the
transitional time in Lithuanian culture. The
opportunities that the young artists are offered
today are rather different from those they had
only a decade ago. YPP’s bold start and its
successful integration into the Lithuanian art
world inspired the emergence of other similar
projects aimed at the promotion of young art.
In 2010 Lithuanian Photographers Association
successfully revived the ‘Debut’ Award, an
annual competition that used to be held during
the period of 1970s–80s. The year 2011 saw
the successful launch of the Young Designer
Prize, a now widely acknowledged annual
award that has a similar format as YPP. The
JCDecaux Award, an annual competition for
the young contemporary Lithuanian artists has
been launched in 2016 and is now gaining its
momentum as well. Starting with 2016, young
contemporary artists from around the Baltic
region are free to take part in the Baltic Young
Artist Award, an initiative that has recently
grown into the Nordic & Baltic Young Artist
Award.
The last decade saw a notable intensification
of the activities of the Lithuanian galleries.
Even though many galleries are openly declaring
their support for and interest in young art,
only a few of them are actually working with
young artists. Established in 2008, The Rooster
Gallery was one of the first galleries that
started working exclusively with the young art
graduates. Notably, at the time the gallery was
considering itself as a non-institutional alternative
to the traditional and rigid institutions.
It was also one of the first mobile galleries
without a permanent exhibition space. Due to
the absence of the tradition of working with
the young artists the gallery had to develop its
own practices through experimental heuristics.
The Rooster Gallery was growing along with
the artists it represented, and over the last decade
it became one of the most active participants
in the Lithuanian art scene, while other
newly established galleries started following
its lead.
The older and more established galleries are
growing more interested in the young artists
as well. In 2011 the “Meno parkas” Gallery
launched the project “The Young: Raw Minds,”
while the “Vartai” Gallery has been holding its
“Thursday Previews” for a few years. Here we
should also mention the galleries “Meno niša”
and “AV17” as active popularisers of young
art, not to mention the Vilnius Academy of Arts
Gallery that regularly showcases the art of its
students and graduates. The question of young
art is attended to in other cities as well: Kaunas
is hosting young art in the galleries such as
“Meno parkas,” “101,” “POST,” and Vytautas
Magnus University Art Gallery, while both
Klaipėda Culture Communication Centre and
Šiauliai Art Gallery are known for their projects
aiming at the local young artists and curators.
Gradually the spectrum of the young-art-related
activities is becoming wider
and the art field is constantly joined by the
new participants open to use the non-traditional
approaches and eager to employ new
forms of curatorial work through artist residencies,
education, etc. The year 2011 saw
the opening of Nida Art Colony, followed by
the launch of the Rupert Centre for Art and
Education in 2012. Opened in 2016, “Editorial”
Project Space is focused on curating various
non-traditional art practices. The same
year the art lab “SHCH/ŠČ” and its partners
launched the “Tapybos maršrutizatoriai” project,
an initiative that showcases the work of
young painters on the city trolleybuses. Lithuanian
art world is also ripe with various private
and communal initiatives such as “Malonioji 6”
(opened in 2012) which later expanded into its
more institutionalised version “Sodų 4.”
The young art scene is actively shaped by cultural
press. Since its launch in 2011, an online
magazine Echo Gone Wrong has been showcasing
the work of contemporary artists and
critics from around the whole Baltic region; for
a number of years now artnews.lt remains one
of the central online hubs for contemporary
Lithuanian art news; “7 meno dienos” is a Lithuanian
culture weekly that has been active for
over two decades, and in 2015 it introduced
“m-pages”, an editorial section dedicated to
the up-and-coming artists.
Contemporary art market is positively impacted
by the growth of the large private
collections largely comprised of the works of
contemporary young artists. Apart from artwork
collection curation and administration,
organisations such as MO Museum (formerly
known as Modern Art Centre) and Lewben Art
Foundation are also fostering the gallery life
and sponsoring various art publishing initiatives.
Young artists are given a lot of attention
at the Art Vilnius, a contemporary art fair that
has been giving the Best Young Artist Award to
its participants since 2009.
The partnership between art and business is
strengthened through various collaborations
between governmental and private art institutions.
This makes a positive impact not only
on the visibility and prominence of young
artists, but on the vitality of the art world as
such. Young artists are now being showcased
in all the key art institutions both national
and private, and their artworks are included
in private art collections. They no longer have
to wait until they are of a ‘respectable age’ in
order for their artworks to finally be acquired
by the national art institutions. The system is
far from perfect (do such things even exist?)
but it is gaining the momentum and it certainly
justifies our hopes for the better. Finally, the
expression ‘a successful young artist’ is no longer
considered an oxymoron.

Where do you
go to, my lovely
by art historian and curator Lina Birzaka-Priekule / Latvia / 2018
120
The phrase “young painter” containsan inexplicablecomplication
that reveals itself when
thinking of young painters in Latvia or what
could it generally mean and what any one of
us might understand by that. If a painter is
called “young”, it has a meaning that we as
art lovers should agree on collectively. It is a
specific phrase (and who does like those) that
is understood quite differently. When asking a
group of friends, mostly consisting of “young
artists”, I received an advice to replace the
word “young” with “promising”, “talented” or
“emerging” (which in Latvian is used as a direct
translation from the English phrase). When
asked what the “young painter” could actually
mean, versions are given that it could be a person
under 30, moments later reaching a mark
of 35. (In that case, how could the Estonian artist
Juhan Soomets receive the Baltic Young Artist
Award being 41 years old?) Perhaps it is an
artist straight out of academy, but maybe what
matters is how many exhibitions and what
curators have noticed him/her, or quite the opposite
- have not noticed? Could it be someone
who’s been creating video pieces for decades
and suddenly felt a calling for painting thus
becoming a “young painter”, as was the case
with Kaspars Groševs, an artist and head of the
427 Gallery? “Young” therefore is someone
relatively young of age, showing characteristics
of youth (whatever that would be); someone
with recent activity, who emerged not long
ago and has little experience, or someone who
is different, other, and has replaced the previous.
Within this tangle of meanings we can
still agree that it is usually somebody else - a
critic, curator, lecturer or viewer - who calls
you a “young painter” and by that immediately
brackets you with The Emerging.
For some time already in the Latvian
institutional art scene there have been attempts
to nominate and show the “emerging”,
yet undiscovered painters. The Latvian National
Museum of Art has taken care of it already
three times by organising the young painters’
exhibitions. The first exhibition was “Candy
Bomber” (“Našķu bumba”) in 2007, then “City
Children” (“Pilsētas bērni”) in 2010, and “Tension”
(“Spriedze”) in 20161. In the “Candy
Bomber” exhibition catalogue Diāna Barčevska,
art scholar and the author of the idea, explains
that such an initiative came due to a necessity
to recognize and conclude what is the artistic
mission awarenessof the young artist generation
that haschosen painting as their way of
personal growth. Admittedly, the proportion of
painters is very large in comparison with students
in other departments of the Art Academy
of Latvia (only Department of Visual Communication
could compete). More than ten young
painters graduate from bachelor and master’s
studies every year, which theoretically could
allow to make “young painters’” exhibitions
once a year. That is not the only program supporting
young painters in particular. In their
communications, the annual SEB Bank Scholarship
in Painting foster giving new and contemporary
dimension to painting and encourage
the Art Academy of Latvia students to use the
language of painting to resolve such intellectually
and artistically challenging issues as the
role of painting, its place and development in
the nearer or further future. This clearly shows
that the role of painting is an issue, although
until the late 19th century painting and art
were almost synonymous, and only in the 20th
century, with the art medium hierarchy ceasing
to exist, painting became only one of the many
possible forms of expression in visual arts.
Already in 1994, in his essay “On Painting”,
art critic Adrain Searle suggestsnot to focus
on the “death” and “crisis” of painting as if it
needed to see a therapist. This raises a question
whether in the modern world distinction
of painting is itself problematic. Art historian
and critic Terry Smith argues that since mid-
20th century contemporary art has become
homogeneous by focusing on a widespread
art infrastructure including markets, museums,
critics, publicists in large European and American
art centers. On the other hand, contemporary
art is diverse in regard to the unlimited
range of materials, vast possibilities, horizons
and unpredictability that artists’ works offer
to viewers. This also shows the wide range of
interests that contemporary art encompasses.
Artists can work in any place in the world, and

their art is circulating everywhere, even in cyberspace.
Possibly for the first time in history,
contemporary art is actually art of the world
- by geographic means and in its diverse expressions,
but inevitably as a united element.
And exactly this diversity of stylistic means in
contemporary art is what allows a much wider
area for expression also in painting - occasionally
raising a question why is this what I’m
seeing defined as painting? Art scholar Ieva Astahovska
in her reading “Tendencies of Latvian
Contemporary Art” (“Tendences Latvijas laikmetīgajā
mākslā”) argues that it is hard to find
any specific characteristics or reliable indications
in contemporaneity itself. If we’re trying
in any way to describe what contemporary art
is, we’re bound to be struck by how uncertain,
vague and flowing this territory is. It is often
rather better characterized by its paradoxes
and contradictions; yet the search for criteria is
ongoing.
In a situation where there’s no consensus
on specific features of contemporary art, as
in our case is for painting, three young artists
become my reference point to describe tendencies
in Latvian painting - Amanda Ziemele,
Elza Sīle and Elīna Vītola2 - all of whom in their
creative work not only study painting as a medium
and form, but use painting as their way of
thinking. All three of them inhere a ceaseless
urge to paint and study not only what they
paint themselves, but also the relationship
between painting itself and the possibility to
exist as an artist. In “Tate Modern” their works
would best fit in the Expanded Painting display
along with Pinot Gallizio, Niki de Saint Phalle,
Richard Smith and others. For some time now
this is called the new comprehension of painting
(Mark Titmarsh, Expanded Painting: Ontological
Aesthetics and the Essence of Colour,
2017) But I would like to think of it as a logical
development of painting since the mid-20th
century.
What is really important about the three young
Latvian painters is that they are all very sophisticated
and read a lot. This could be one of
the reasons leading Amanda Ziemele to speak
about forgetting in her work. Our mind is like a
sponge. Our earliest ancestors were probably
sponge-like. At least once a week we sense a
sparkling at the end of tongue: “Suppose we
try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our
consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein;
but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely
active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it,
beckoning us in a given direction, making us
at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness
and then letting us sink back without the
longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed
to us, this singularly definite gap acts immediately
so as to negate them. They do not fit
into its mould. And the gap of one word does
not feel like the gap of another, all empty of
content as both might seem necessarily to be
when described as gaps.” (William James, The
Principles of Psychology, 1893, p. 251) There
are no gaps, everything is in a continuation of
our flowing conversation.
The young painter Amanda Ziemele depicts
this very familiar feeling - suddenly forgetting
such generally known thing as, for example,
the author of “The Last Supper”. In her exhibition
at the Stockholm gallery “Candyland”
large format abstract paintings show strange,
unordered maps of thought-waves (but am
I supposed to say this if the painting is abstract?).
Scattered on the floor are ceramic
tongues once again reminding that “you’re not
getting this on your tongue now”. Ideas that
Amanda Ziemele has found by an in-depth
research here interact with an unobtrusive and
subtle humor.
The ability to laugh, mostly at oneself, is also
possessed by painter Elīna Vītola. For the last
28 years she’s been hoping to become an
artist. To achieve that she has used very different
strategies. Her latest attempt was an
exhibition at the Kogo Gallery in Tartu titled
“Common Issues in Painting and Everyday
Life – Crapstraction”3. Elīna examined ways
of becoming a renowned crapstractionist. But
it must be admitted that her success depends
only on us – the curators, gallerists, collectors,
wall decorators and critics, because the artist
herself has little influence in this hierarchy.
And it’s unlikely that we will soon see a day
when Elīna is going to pick her laurels. The
thing is that Elīna was born in Eastern Europe
and although the UN has recognised all three
Baltic states as part of Northern Europe, it will
probably not help the artist.
The only survivors in the complicated art
market hierarchy are those who are discovered
or remembered by curators. When looking at
Elīna’s paintings, perhaps you already have an
idea of what is in front of you. Use your “magic
eye” and see the image4. Perhaps you will
get lucky, and a deer, a fairy or the Lion King
will appear in front of you. Or maybe it is the
pattern from the upholstery of your grandmother’s
armchair? Or maybe you will get
extremely lucky and catch the artist herself,
who will tell you that for the first time in her
life she has created a new pattern that is a mix
of all the previous patterns she did not invent
herself. Maybe from all of this you might come
to a conclusion that trying to find recognisable
images in abstraction is a common everyday
issue. Elīna Vītola has made her manifesto
that I am not going to reveal to you, although
it has already appeared on Instagram. But it is
important to add that the manifesto is being
consequently realized on a painted sofa and on
an incredibly long canvas roll of which only a
very tiny part is visible.
Also in Elza Sīle’s exhibition “A Decent Little
Hike on Roads Rural and Dangerous, Plus Ugly”
at gallery Alma one can find many things except
for painting in its classical (conservative?)
conception. Nevertheless, in an interview the
artist tells: “I used classic painting materialsgraphite,
oil, acrylic. The painting - or rather
this composition - is something between a
painting, a board game, a miniature stage; it
looks like a landscape, it’s created with classic
painting materials and keeps the material conventions.”
Although the artist has used typical
materials, her approach is definitely unconventional.
In this case the painting materials are
used as construction materials to build houses
and towns, playgrounds and parks, toilets and
what not. The exhibition displayed adhesive
prints with tattoos, which reflect the paintings
in the same room, but put on a human body;
plates with maps of imaginative places and artist’s
poetry - placed horizontally (no one said
that paintings must be always placed vertically
by the wall). See how precisely she speaks of
standard conceptions about painting (what
does it even mean - pure hue or impure, to
construct a painting, too big or too small?) and
what can bee seen in her works:
‘’construction of an image’’
‘’to construct a meaning’’
‘’to build a painting’’
what what
Brushstrokes literary hold the image
if. then
scale and conventions
how
standardize building materials
on
semantic plan
or
grid of the drawing
trough and to
exaggerated givens
So it happened that I’ve been chosen to curate
the next young painters’ exhibition. I
respect the interconnectedness of mediums
in contemporary art, and keeping in mind the
similarity to topical frames in group exhibitions
(would the theme be animals, folklore
or future predictions), I made a decision to
rename it the young artists’ exhibition and not
to restrict artists by nonexistent frames. As for
the three artists mentioned before, I can only
wish them luck - even though sometimes luck
can turn out to be ill luck and vice versa. In any
case - they will participate in the young artists’
exhibition and not because they are painters.

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All Participants: www.ypp.lt/2019