A show titled Decision Maker by Eglė Norkutė fuses the painter’s creative search and her response to current issues. In a restless everyday life, the artist tries to envision the (im)possibility of the presence of the decisive element that determines it, while examining the causal links between events and phenomena and looking for alternatives to them. The painter asks if the decisions are made by a higher force, or maybe there are no decision makers and everything is determined by chance? She translates her doubts right here into painting: what is the real decisive factor here, in the reality of the exhibition? Is it the self-possessed creator, or the all-encompassing painting? Observing the painter’s tensions between her efforts to control and allow herself to be controlled, the manifestations of pragmatism and the escapist search for spirituality reveals not only the origins of the self-centered exhibition, but also the aim for the collective representation of modern society.
Reflecting on the gap between the recent past and the present reality opened by the pandemic and the war and experiencing the anxiety about the fate and legacy of our civilization, E. Norkutė compares and intertwines the art motifs of extinct ancient civilizations with the signs of current culture. In her work, everyday details and artistic artifacts appear side by side, the earthly dimension mixes with the metaphysical one, and secular elements with sacred quotations. She combines the borrowed images into a chaotic, eclectic whole, which, however, obeys its peculiar inner laws. The unfolding story of the exhibition creates a universal, timeless mythology that is, nonetheless, firmly grown into our time.
By accumulating and organizing the imagery, E. Norkutė archives the culture itself, discovering the signs of self-destruction in it and simultaneously alluding to the hope of regeneration and rebirth. In the coexistence of different archival objects created by E. Norkutė, new connections of values are created that merge the narratives offered by the artist with the viewer’s personal experiences and intuitions and thus branching into many possible narrative directions. The unifying element is the scenography of the exhibition, which incorporates individual works into the whirlpool of (un)subordinate painterly circumstances, and turns the exposition into an ephemeral theatre of shadows and reflections – as if trying to give shapes to nameless gods and ghosts of art history.
Eglė Norkutė (b. 1993) is a painter of the younger generation. In 2019 she graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts with a Master’s degree in painting. Since 2019 she is a member of the Lithuanian Artists’ Association. Since 2017 she has organized solo shows, participated in local and international exhibitions and art residencies. The painter has won awards and prizes in art competitions; she is a finalist of the Young Painter’s Prize (2018, 2019) and winner of the Rooster Gallery Special Prize (2019).
