Photo reportage from Andrius Zakarauskas's solo show "In the Name Of"

February 17, 2014
Author Echo Gone Wrong

Galerija Vartai presents Andrius Zakarauskas’s third solo show. One of the most promising and highly regarded painters of the younger generation, Zakarauskas’s work occupies all the gallery exhibition spaces and will include paintings and collages created during the past year. In his work the artist explores the themes of painting as ideology and cult creation with an attempt to (de)construct their correlations. The questions addressed in the exhibition In the Name Of are inseparable from the artist’s earlier work in which he also reflected on painting, the role of the painter, and the suggestibility of painting.

The latest works from Zakarauskas use painting techniques – colour, the stroke of the brush and almost abstract composition structures – to create a certain ‘utopian ideology’” connecting it to painting and the figure of the painter. Quoting and interpreting the rhetoric of propaganda, pathos which is at the same time both insistent and inspiring, the postures and gestures cultivated by the great authoritarian ideologies and religions, the artist makes them subject to painting. Thus a fictional cult-like atmosphere is created highlighting the role of the artist as demiurge (omnipotent creator).

The artist is especially intrigued by the structure and elements of ideology creation, the consistent repetition, intensity of expression and various associations of which become independent and potentially able to influence the consciousness of the perceiver. Zakarauskas keeps returning to the issues of the nature of creativeness and the myth of the divinity of the creator. The title of the exhibition is often associated with faith, religious or some other ideological sacrifice, and serves as the key to the idea behind the exhibition. The collages and 3D objects displayed alongside the canvases also investigate various aspects of the topic which concerns the artist.

Zakarauskas was born in 1982 in Kaunas. He currently resides and works in Vilnius and Kaunas. He studied at the Vilnius Academy of Arts from 2001 to 2005 and at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche in 2004. He graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2010 with an MA in painting. The artist’s work has been displayed in galleries throughout the world, including Schultz Contemporary, Germany; the Andreas Binder galleries in the Netherlands, Germany, and the USA; Galleria Traghetto, Italy; Galerie Römerapotheke, Switzerland; Studio d’Arte Cannaviello, Italy; Galeria MittelEuropa, Sweden, the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania; the ViennaFair and Hangar 7 art fairs, Austria, etc. He was awarded first place in the Young Painter Prize competition in 2009 and the Young Creator award by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania in 2011.

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Photographs by Marta Ivanova