Exhibition of Finnish printmaking, “Drawn line – contours of art”, represents 8 Finnish artists, both established and emerging new artists. What unites this group is love to stone lithography. The exhibition in Vilnius brings out lithography’s many artistic possibilities to express. Beautiful washes, fine line drawings, photographic image and rich crayon drawing are just few of the possibilities lithography has to offer. Exhibition invites to take a peak at Finnish psychic landscape, helping the viewer with a few guidelines.
Andrei Bakharev’s themes for his works are the surrounding city landscape and its habitants, people. He likes to draw lonely persons, because he seems himself as one of them. Feeling of loneliness is a known feeling for people in bigger cities – lots of people, few friends. Bakharev’s works are often moments during the night – then you can be alone with the landscape.
Kalle Berg represents a generation of Finnish printmaking, who work between traditional craftsmanship and digitally produced image. His work as a printer is a source of ideas for his own artistic work. Berg’s works are beautiful, philosophical studies on color and form.
Annika Dahlsten is fascinated in stone lithography by the beauty and complexity of drawing, and the possibility of re-producing and altering something so momentary as a drawn line. Drawing with liquid ink is very spontaneous but the whole printmaking process is about building up the image slowly, layer by layer. She works with themes such as memory or solitude, often referring to art history or literature.
Leonora Fredriksson, a painter, simply loves drawing on stone. The stone doesn’t forgive mistakes, but Fredriksson beautifully uses the shiny surface of the stone. Her fine, fragile drawings are dreamlike visions, where nature and animals play an important role.
Matti Hintikka is a middle generation printmaker, who has always been focused on lithography. Hintikka uses combination of basic elements: stone, water, earth and air. His earthlike color palette refers to the connection to nature, which is so special to Finns. Hintikka’s works represented the landscape, both physically and mentally.
Kuutti Lavonen is interested in lithography, because it gives the possibility to draw and paint at the same time. Lavonen’s inspiration is the Renaissance and Baroque art and he draws human face over and over again. Female saints and legends have now been joined by male faces in Lavonen’s art. Lavonen has painted a grand series of biblical studies in historical Tyrvää St. Olaf church which has been opened this summer.
Elina Sipilä, artist from Lappland, works with painting and lithography. In her works she uses the rugged northern landscape to evoke questions of memory and identity. Painterly works are printed layer by layer to achieve to new dimensions both in color and image, in emotions and interactions.
Kaisu Sirviö is a master on elegant and strong brush strokes. She paints with liquid ink on stone, very spontaneously but firmly and is able to produce a whole variety of tones and textures. The themes of her works are expression of nature, organic and ornamental.

Exhibition is supported by: Arts Council in Finland, FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange), Finnish embassy in Lithuania, Culture ministry of Lithuania, Vilnius graphic art centre, “UpArtas”

Exhibition opening:

On display the visitor will see small and medium drawings from 2007- 2009 and 5 animation videos.
The drawings are the result of a process relating on very different media. The artist selected a series of images from the Internet, personal photographs, images of famous paintings (mostly japanese old masters).
While drawing this series Belloni got very interested in cinema and the moving image, especially to movies and collages referring to Quentin Tarantino’s cinematography. The reproduction on paper of this inputs, stealing and pirating the images inducted the artist to use them like Duchamp used objects for his ready mades.

The ready-made is today used by a large number of contemporary artists like a material that leads to the object, the work of art. Belloni explains “[...] an artist can use tempera or oil colour. He can use marble, wood or iron. The ready made works the same way, it is a material, a recognised technique in contemporary creation. Instead of using painting or sculpture I started using images. I would call my drawings more “collages” then proper drawings considering the fact that I meticulously reproduced preexisting images without manipulating them.”

On May 25th 2010 Argentine celebrates 200 years of the revolution that opened the way towards Independence. At this stage we propose to consolidate a new multicultural focus aimed at the recovery of the living history of our identity in its multiple manifestations and the transformations that this identity has suffered in these 200 years, contributing to a deep reflection on the affirmation of unity in diversity.
In order to continue with the bilateral relations between Argentina and Lithuania, started in 1991 we wish to go on participating and to achieve in this date, as part of the commemorative events, the graphic productions of our artists. Tango, Country symbols, costums, traditions, folklore, the city, the suburb are some of the subjects akin to our national heritage. They represent us and are widely dealt with here. Art, as always, is one of the means by excellence for communication between peoples and ever since man inhabits this planet has served as a link for unity and concordance
Rafael Gil, Nestor Goyanes and Matias Amici even though belonging to different generations share lithography as a technique their expression. In the case of Lidia Paladino there is a fusion of the burin’s technique and the manufacture of hand made paper. Juan Carlos Stekelman with the wood and lino printing and his characteristic feature of the hand printing discipline. Angus Vazquez and Carlos Scannapieco continue in the wide scope of the traditional techniques of printing on metal. María Vera employes polymer and Lorena Pradal, a young representative of the graphic art, communicates through photolithography. They all are artists with a recognized background in the local and international circuits and they exhibit images of great esthetic versatility, placing their materials and resources to the service of creativity.
The setting up of a new interchange between our communities is the collective effort of a group of professionals and institutions which continue believing in the building of this “Cultural Bridge”. With the support of the Cultural Business Direction of the Argentine Foreign Ministry, The Republic of Lithuania Embassy in Argentina, and The Vilnius Printmakers Center of the Lithuania Plastic Artists Association ,we hope that this proposition could be an excellent way to continue our cultural relationship and at the same time to keep alive our idea of Independence.

Patricia Cohen

Visitors and residents of Vilnius will be invited to a long promenade across the downtown and Old Town. Series of exhibitions devoted to the Lithuanian contemporary art and paintings of more than sixty Lithuanian artists will be displayed in twenty-five art galleries and exhibition halls.

Retrospective exhibition “Abstraction and Expressionism: Two Traditions of Vilnius Painting” will be displayed in “Arka” Gallery. This theme will also connect many exhibitions of paintings one, two or several painters in smaller spaces. The exhibitions are going to reveal how these two traditions have developed in Lithuania from 1960 to present.

Apart from prevailing themes of abstraction and expressionism, the exhibition series will introduce trends of realism, neo-romanticism and conceptualism and works of artists who have chosen the individual way of their creative life. The exhibition series will cover a wide range of painting forms: sensitively expressive, intellectually controlled, literary and minimalist and will also introduce a wide panorama of contemporary art.