Retrospective exhibitions have always struck me as a very sad thing, symbolising the inevitable end and looking back. It's as if we know that there is an end in human form and that none of us will escape, but we still naively hope to escape, or at least to bring the end into the distant future. The future is unwritten and anything can happen. We are left with hope, which gives us comfort, and accumulated memories, which seem to fill all the cracks, forming an imaginary perception of ourselves.
The exhibition consists of watercolours and objects. I have been casting watercolours intensively from 2007-2013. This is the "pre-acrylic" period of my work. In 2008 I defended my Master's diploma by showing these watercolour-illustrations from the series "Waiting for the horse". The watercolours are in the same format: 76 x 56 cm, divided into three series: 'Waiting for the Horse', 'Smile Naively' and 'The Final Circus'.
The objects are a new direction in my work, a kind of creative experiment. Going through the archives left by my father, the stories of the past simply haunted my eyes and heart, causing uncontrollable lamentation, laughter, wonder and forgotten stories. He never threw anything away, he collected and kept everything: letters written to him in the 90s, postcards, primary school grade books, paper coffee cups with dates written on them (I remember drinking coffee at the bus station in Vilnius, waiting for the bus to Panevėžys), etc. There is so much, maybe even too much... A true aesthetic of the past, intimately knitting inner dialogues. You shudder, you cringe... too many different codes, passwords. A kaleidoscopic narrative of existence unfolds. You hear the quiet whisper of a thermos flask or an old perfume bottle and you feel that there is no one me and that I am made up of hundreds, thousands of particles, subtly falling into one huge, unfathomable picture. Just know how to listen respectfully and don't rush anywhere...
I dedicate this exhibition to my Father, who passed away last year - a scientist, a great optimist and my inspiration. This is the most naked, intimate and sensitive of my exhibitions to date. I invite you to come in!
