Povilas Ričardas Vaitiekūnas. Ūlos Str. 19, Mardasavas

This is our sixth exhibition with Povilas Ričardas Vaitiekūnas. It features objects, assemblages, and paintings by the artist. The exhibition comprises three parts meticulously staged by the maestro himself and his son Jonas.

Among the familiar Mardasavian scenes and still lifes, the latest canvas Black Berries (2021) stands out. The exhibition also presents objects created between 1979 and 2023. These include the series Pixies (1994, 2019) and Northern Mnemosynes (2019). Like the artist’s entire oeuvre, these works reveal his distinctive pantheistic worldview, which manifests itself through various metaphysical visual tropes – metaphors, personifications, and symbols. Also on display are assemblages dedicated to his fellows Algis Skačkauskas, Eimuntas Nekrošius, Gražina Kliaugienė, Antanas Martinaitis, and others.

Another standout of the exhibition is the conceptual work The Life and Death of Colours (1979–2023). Vaitiekūnas ruthlessly scrapes the paint off failed works into a jar. Once the latter is filled with the contents of still lifes, compositions, and landscapes, he hermetically seals it, thereby restricting further physical transformation.

The display culminates in the highly symbolic Cenotaph – 68 Books (2014–2024). It is Vaitiekūnas’ poignant homage to his friends, the luminaries with whom he had close ties and who inspired him. This work and the number in its title are a conceptual form of commemoration of numerous notable personalities: writers, philosophers, and artists, famous and lesser-known.

In the exhibition, Vaitiekūnas speaks not only with images, but also with literary language. Poetry aptly resonates with and complements the artist’s fundamental aspiration to create wholesome and spirited works.