The exhibition entitled “One More Day” represents the recent work of Laura Slavinskaitė, the finalist of this year’s Young Painter’s Prize Competition and the winner of its Special Prize.
Different cultures and sages teach us to cherish time, the present moment and this day, but while some pursue their own goals with reckless abandon, others live in their own routines, from which it is hard to escape, and in the end, a day becomes “one more day”. Laura Slavinskaitė’s recent work depicts a person suspended in time, in a moment, in which diverse experiences, self-analysis and the search for identity are intertwined in the fast pace of life. Anyone can recognise those states of mind embodied in the portraits and abstract paintings painted with dense brushstrokes.
According to the artist, the core of the exhibition is a return to the original goal of dedicating her work to the people she meets. Several series of paintings, painted over several years, analyse human existence in everyday life. The series “Notes”, started in 2019 and still ongoing today, depicts portraits of people she has met (friends, family, colleagues, visitors to the studio). Here, the uniform format (20 x 20 cm) echoes the image culture of social media, the trend for selfies, when a person showcases the best version of themselves.
The next creative leap takes us back to the recent quarantine period, when faces were replaced by screen pixels in everyday life, and it was forbidden to see the people you had just seen in person. This is how the “Faceless” series appeared in L. Slavinskaitė’s paintings during the pandemic. At first one by one, then a few, and finally the multitude (of silhouettes and faces) come together in one – a sea of facelessness and become a landscape of unrecognised identities.
Emilija Šneiderytė, the curator of the exhibition: “In the exhibition, the visitor may be surprised and uncomfortable by the very large number of faces in the space – as if there is a feeling of being constantly watched. But by looking more closely at each face, I believe that the visitor will identify with it, and in the end, the stranger’s face will become familiar.”
Laura Slavinskaitė (1994) is a young painter, who graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2019 with a Master’s degree in painting. Since 2014 she has been actively participating in group exhibitions and has held 5 solo exhibitions (Lithuania, Austria). In 2022, she entered the final of the Baltic competition “Young Painter’s Prize”, where she won a special prize. In 2017, she won 1st prize in the international Algimantas Švėgžda Drawing Competition “Drawing 2017”, and in 2016 she was a laureate in the exhibition “The Best Artwork of 2016”. Her works are in private collections in Lithuania, Switzerland, USA, Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. “The living environment, no matter where I am, be it the city or nature, shrinks as far as my senses can reach and becomes a backdrop for the acts of consciousness.” Recently, the author’s main motifs have been the city and the human being living in it, the change and transformation of the contemporary world.
Laura Slavinskaitė’s exhibition “One More Day” will be on show at the Artists’ Association Gallery until 31 December. The exhibition is free of charge.
Curator – Emilija Šneiderytė.
Sponsors: Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius City, Lithuanian Artists’ Association.
Laura Slavinskaitė
ONE MORE DAY
Artists’ Association Gallery, 2 Vokiečių St., Vilnius
9–31 December, 2022
Opening reception: 9 December, FRI, 7 pm
Gallery opening hours:
II-V 11-19, VI 11-16
