CONTRASTS IN THE EXHIBITION OF A. PETRAŠIŪNAITĖ AND A. DRAZDAUSKAITĖ 2

Viktorija Liubinaitė
www.kamane.lt, 2011-12-03

In brief: The exhibition from the series ‘Duets’ of two Lithuanian artists Audronė Petrašiūnaitė and Laima Drazdauskaitė is displayed in Kaunas, the Aukso Pjūvis Gallery. The authors have more differences than similarities – they are dissimilar in terms of stylistics, temperament and representation of different generations.

However, these artists know each other for a long time. The friendship of both authors is the main stimulus to organise a joint exhibition. They are also united by a professional attitude towards painting. They both accentuate different aspects but none of them tolerates superficial, sentimental or undeveloped painting. The show is as if a game of contrasts aiming to find as much differences of the duet as possible.

First of all, the dissimilar topic could be noticed. L. Drazdauskaitė most often uses motives of nature; there are no subjects in her compositions, nothing happens in them. There is only a motive and its atmosphere, a possibility to contemplate, moods, emotions and experiences created by images of nature. Topics of L. Drazdauskaitė’s pictures are universal; they speak about the spiritual world deriving from nature, existing near us.

A. Petrašiūnaitė uses different motives; she identifies herself with the pop singer Lady Gaga. This is unexpected because in her earlier works the space of world is restricted to the boundaries of the artist’s home environment and personal experiences related to painful feet. In the meanwhile, Lady Gaga is described as an active, relevant, extravagant, social and intertextual personality of the international pop culture.

Such alternative of the author should be congratulated – art speaks about cultural phenomena that happen now and here. The author examines mass culture and its relation to a common person and reflects individual physical and spiritual experiences.

Different colouring of the artists meets the viewer’s eye too. In L. Drazdauskaitė’s works colours are most often pastel, bright and monochromatic. The colouring of A. Petrašiūnaitė’s pictures is vivid and dark. Painful, heavy and sad experiences demand a drastic palette of paints. Intensive black, red and blue dominate in the works. Red is playing the main role, representing suffering and passion of living.

Finally, the artists abstract elements of composition differently. L. Drazdauskaitė does that much more intensively; all the elements have their clear equivalents in nature; forms are abstract while motives are real.  A. Petrašiūnaitė uses abstraction more moderately but intertwines elements into surreal images. Hyperbolised, deformed figures refer to the specific worldview of the author and point the eye at the sore places of pictures.

In conclusion, antinomies define the exhibition the best: vivid – pastel, sharp – soft, personal – universal. Nature without human forms is inspiration to one of the artists, while another one is influenced by her own intimate and close surroundings. In any case, an individual world is created, open to wide interpretations. The duet represents harmony of contrasts from a poetical natural world to personal and hurtful experiences, coloured with a light irony.


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