Simona Rukuižaitė. Stone and Water

From April 2 to 30, 2026, the Vilnius Graphic Art Centre gallery ‘Kairė-dešinė‘ will host an exhibition by Simona Rukuižaitė titled ‘Stone and Water‘. The opening will take place on 2 April 2026 at 6 pm.

How can we approach a material whose history predates human experience? How can artistic practice become a way to pose questions about the origins and meanings of a material? Navigating between the fields of art and science – painting, geology, and field research – I explore the history of ochre, its diversity of forms and transformations into colour.

The search for ochre – travelling from the fjords of Iceland to the slopes of Mount Etna – becomes a study of the conditions of its formation and structural nuances. In the exhibition, this process unfolds through stages of observation, archiving, grinding, and sieving – slow, repetitive gestures that embody transformation. As water shapes stone, a gradual transformation occurs: rock becomes pigment, pigment becomes colour. The focus shifts to the matter of the artwork – its origins, states and changes. Ochre is perceived not only as a colour or painting material, but also as a fragment of the earth’s history, absorbing the processes of deep time and traces of cultural memory.

One of the essential motifs is the experience of time: geological time, spanning millions of years, intersects with human time, fragmented and subjective. Ochre testifies to the formation of earth’s layers yet acquires meaning through the gestures of the present moment – touch, gaze, memory. A geological perspective intertwines with a poetic approach, allowing matter to be considered as active and ever-changing. The space surrounding the objects highlights their fragility and the silence that envelops them, where stone becomes a storyteller of time, memory, and existence on Earth.

The research took place over four years of doctoral art studies, with particular attention paid to the relationship between deep time and human memory.

Simona Rukuižaitė

Simona Rukuižaitė (b. 1994, Vilnius) is an artist-researcher whose work reflects on the intersections between material, landscape, and time. She graduated with a BA in Monumental arts (fresco and mosaic, 2018) and an MA in Site-specific art (2020) from the Vilnius Academy of Arts and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Fine arts. She has held solo exhibitions in Lithuania and Portugal; her work has been presented at the Ravenna Mosaic Biennale in Italy; she has participated in the Camargo Foundation residency in France as well as other international projects in Lithuania and abroad.