JŪRATĖ MYKOLAITYTĖ
March 29, 2019 / April 24, 2019
Paintings
The exhibition of the works of Vilnius painter Jūratė Mykolaitytė in the "Baroti" gallery is not the first in Klaipėda. But every time it becomes a memorable event. The artist studied painting at the Lithuanian State Art Institute (1972–1978), from 1979 participates in exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad (Ukraine, Finland, Luxembourg, Hungary, Germany, Holland, Latvia, Czech Republic, Greece, USA, Russia, Turkey, Denmark, China), held close to half a dozen individual exhibitions. Since 1988 J. Mykolaitytė is a member of the Lithuanian Artists' Union, her works are stored in the Lithuanian Art Museum, the National M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum, the Moscow Art Foundation, the Dodge Museum in Detroit, and they have been purchased by private individuals in Lithuania and abroad. In contemporary Lithuanian painting, Jūratė Mykolaitytė's work stands away from colorist traditions, abstractions, and even more so from the manifestations of new art. Her painting stands out for its unique approach to the object and its interpretation. The artist's paintings are dominated by a surrealistically recreated literary narrative based on intelligence and intuition, which turns into "another reality", a detailed drawing, a thin-layered painting style, monochrome coloring, where the relationship between light and shadow is more important than color. The main "hero" of her paintings is a fantasy city, where you can recognize not only the real motifs of Vilnius, mostly Užupis, which turn into visions, dreams. Masterfully transformed into reality, changing the properties of objects, juxtaposing real images with illusory ones, gives birth to another reality - a fantasy city. This city has a post-civilizational feel: phantasmagorical buildings, continuous like melted wax, and landscape, still life elements of unexpected proportions interspersed between them are equivalent to architectural motifs. Recently, the relationship between plane and space has been extremely relevant in J. Mykolaitytė's work. Apparently, the two-dimensional canvas is becoming too cramped for the artist. She did not shy away from "going" outside the picture before - together with a. a. Klaudius Petrulis and Algird Petrulis, they were the first to start painting clocks, put together compositions from several canvases, etc. However, recently, by changing the format of the picture, an independent kinetic painting object is created, the changing image of which acquires new interpretations every time. The extraordinarily spacious artistic imagination of J. Mykolaitytė provides viewers not only with aesthetic pleasure, but also with thoughtful reflection. - Art researcher dr. Danutė Zovienė
