ART DUBAI 2017

The eleventh edition of International art fair Art Dubai takes place March 15-18, 2017 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.The Rooster Gallery will take part in the fair for the second time and will represent the exposition titled Mindbuilding, – a painterly dialogue between two outstanding artists Andrius Zakarauskas and Kristina Ališauskaite.

Painting itself and its physical body are at the core of Andrius Zakarauskas’s work. The artist focuses on the fundamental elements of painting – stroke, colour, the light/shadow relationship and the surface of the canvas, conceptualizing them and making them part of the painting narrative. In his works that approach abstraction, a human figure can always be distinguished. Most often it is the painter who both identifies himself with the painting and at the same time observes it from afar, and is present both on this and the other side of the canvas, disappearing and resurfacing again in the painting. It is his hands that touch the canvas with soft pastel strokes or construct its surface from blocks of vivid colours strong as blows. Although the portraits are nameless and depersonalized, the works by Zakarauskas are not devoid of sensual autobiographical details.

In her work, Kristina Ališauskaitė also uses the images of the human body (above all, the hands). But in her paintings, the human body loses its physicality. It performs the functions of a sign or symbol, and the painter employs it as an instrument to explore the broader problems of identity and psychology. Ališauskaitė’s works erase the boundary between the tangible and the imaginary, and balance in between cinematography, dream and reality. Time occupies a very important place in her work, and processuality and cyclicity is emphasized. Bodily actions and movements turn into symbolical rituals reflecting psychological states and various aspects of human identity. Ališauskaitė’s paintings are minimalist and thrifty from the viewpoint of both visual expression and content, and the narrative is conveyed through enigmatic hints. Thus, the painted scenes do not offer a concrete story but rather act as catalysts of emotions.

Despite different creative strategies, the works of both artists are close not only visually or emotionally – both artists assert the openness, multifacetedness and contextuality of artworks. Placed next to each other, the works by the two artists expose new angles, and novel aspects of their content and visual expression are revealed. Laconic and indefinite narratives of the paintings raise more questions than offer answers, and provoke the viewers to appeal to their own experience. Therefore, it is not only a conversation between the two artists, but also an exchange of ideas between the artists and the viewers. In the space open for communication, collective mindbuilding becomes a metaphor of creating the semantic field of an artwork.