18 05 2022 – 18 06 2022 06
THE ROOM gallery
Polocko st. 17, Vilnius
From May 18 through June 18, THE ROOM gallery (Polocko 17, Vilnius) hosts a group exhibition by four artists, Ina Budrytė, Eglė Gineitytė, Linas Leonas Katinas (1941–2020), and Eglė Vertelkaitė THE Blooms of Blood in support of Ukraine.
Exhibition opening Thursday 26 May 2022 at 6 p. m.
Art critic Vidas Poškus on the exhibition:
On 24 February this year, russia (internationally noncapitalized) launched an open and powerful attack on Ukraine. It seemed like nothing new… Their aggression has been ongoing for eight years. But the scale and pretensions (geopolitical/ideological/psychopathic) are impressive, putting it mildly.
On the first days of the invasion, the artist Eglė Gineitytė took a stretched canvas and a tube of oil paints. It was the so-called Krapplack – Alizarin Lake – transparent dye of the colour red, which used to be extracted from madder root ((oldenlandia umbellata) and is now a synthetic pigment. The artists who studied painting during soviet years or the early Independence years, know that it was at the time one of the most readily available pigments (just like “Phcs” (Phthlocyanine) Blue and Green). The pigments closely linked with soviet scarcity, the so-called ‘deficit’, and the overpowering gloom… On the third week of war, Gineitytė applied on a support three layers of Alizarin Lake, because, as she says: ‘I pray for the Nation putting on a defiant resistance, for the dying and for those being born, for those who separate in hope to reunite in a Free Fatherland’. The artist Ina Budrytė opens up her heart: ‘After the invasion of Feb 24, as the scale of destruction and blood cruelty grew hundred-fold, I realized that no matter what I did, I could not stop a single killer’s bullet; no longer able to put myself to art, I stopped painting, and now all that I do, is wait, dream of, and pray for the victory of the glorious Ukrainians.’ Yet her earlier works send warning signals about the imminent threat of evil and the everlasting instinct of aggression. Eglė Vertelkaitė keeps working, and chooses a form of reproduced images (figures, tables, crosswords, diagrams and graphs) to imply and to state openly that the evil instincts perceive all kind of loss as ‘simple statistics’. (Under a layer of shellack, these images might strike as a self-serving and aesthetic mathematics). Linas Leonas Katinas (a classic and a buddy of Pantagruel) can see me and you from Havens, where he sips red wine on a cloud and predicts a total decline of morality, but at the same time knows that the good will win, and shortly we will raise our glasses to the victory of the Ukrainian people.
The title of the exhibition of these four artists in response to war and as a sign of support to Ukraine was prompted by an artwork by Eglė Gineitytė, The Blooms of Blood. It was created during the first weeks of the invasion (precisely, during the third week). The four artists, Ina Budrytė, Eglė Gineitytė, Eglė Vertelkaitė, and Linas Leonas Katinas, share their feelings in the face of war and stand by Ukraine. Slava Ukraini!
Exhibition runs: 18 05 2022 05 18 –18 06 2022 06
Gallery open:
II–V 11.00–19.00
VI 11.00–15.00
Free visiting.
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