November

(About the exhibition “Transflat” of Konstantinas Gaitanži)Justina Kučinskaitė
www.kamane.lt, 2008 11 11

K. Gaitanži 

In brief: The works of Konstantinas Gaitanži are the caricature of contemporary society heading towards self-destruction. The pupil of Jonas Gasiūnas announces the death of painting and views the world through the prism of irony frequently typical of maximalism of young people.

The exhibition “Transflat” organised at Kaunas gallery Meno Parkas and named according to the analogy with the Japanese post-modernism movement “Superflat” is formed of ten photographed paintings. Eclecticism of colours, composition and themes prevails – huge formats of paintings typical of television press down information into colourful stories which mock the status of the society in various languages.

K.Gaitanži stresses the influence of comics style on his works. It is vividly expressed by colours, flat painting and literature features of paintings. The author does not care about the management of the line, perspective – everything that is typical of post-modern painting is rejected. Paintings look like newspaper sections with headlines covering diverse social and global problems starting with environment protection, gene engineering and ending with cult of pornography. The interest of the author in science fiction is apparent - he explores themes of artificial intellect, evolution, cyborgization.

The author practices certain alchemy by joining different cultural media and scales of values that contradict each other. The sanctity of Sebastian is deformed by placing him in anti-cultural and unspiritual environment, for instance. Sarcastic attitude towards Hollywood industry is revealed. K. Gaitanži remakes myths and creates new ones.

The artist chooses two international languages – Latin, the language of Europe until the 19th century, and English, the universal language of today. The linguistic aspect enjoyed by post-modernists grants originality to the exhibition and enables the author to express his position in a more specific and lively manner. Still, illiteracy of the artist may be noticed in paintings as well as annotation of the exhibition. Is it a deliberately staged means of expression?

In general, works of K.Gaitanži lack summation. Analysis of social problems ends in their exposition, i.e., the author offers no alternative. Vapidity that the artist perceives in contemporary society has impact on the form of his works insensibly. Irony is not the only way to explore the world, even though it is rather attractive.