Rasmus Marks

Baroti Gallery in Klaipėda presents Double Kickless, the first solo exhibition in Lithuania by Latvian painter Rasmus Marks. The exhibition is organised by the Young Painter Prize (YPP) in collaboration with Baroti Gallery, inviting audiences to discover one of the most promising artists of Latvia’s emerging generation of painters.   Founded in 2009, the international Young Painter Prize (YPP) project aims to discover emerging painters and help bring their work to a wider audience. The project connects artists from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine, not only organising a competition but also helping young painters discover new professional opportunities. In collaboration with Baroti Gallery, former YPP finalists are invited to present their work in solo exhibitions in Klaipėda. Rasmus Marks has reached the YPP competition finals for several consecutive years, and this solo exhibition offers an opportunity to explore his artistic practice in greater depth.   In Double Kickless, the artist explores sensations of movement, balance and uncertainty through painting and unconventional display methods. The exhibition title is borrowed from freestyle scooter riding, where it refers to a difficult trick that Rasmus dreamed of performing as a child but never managed to accomplish. The movement that remains in his memory becomes a starting point for exploring how the experience of flight and an unrealised possibility can be translated into images.   The tilted canvases echo the positions of a scooter deck in mid-air, while two elongated paintings evoke the ramps of a skatepark. The paintings become part of a spatial composition that transforms the viewer’s conventional relationship with painting. To view the works, visitors must move around, change their viewing angle and seek out different positions. In this way, the viewer is physically drawn into the state of instability and apparent weightlessness created by the artist.   Overlapping, recurring and colliding images on the painted surfaces convey the coexistence of multiple realities. The artist is interested in the sensation of seeming to occupy several places at once, while feeling fully present in none of them. This idea unfolds through the relationship between the image and the position of the canvas: what we see also depends on where we stand.   In Double Kickless, painting intersects with the movement of extreme sports, personal memory and imagination. Rasmus Marks invites viewers to experience a painting as an object in space and to consider an unrealised ambition as a possibility for new creative exploration.  

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The exhibition at KADS Baroti Gallery runs until December 1.   Gallery Patrons: UAB “Stemma Group” and UAB “Vakarų medienos grupė”   The project is partially funded by the Klaipėda City Municipality.   Partners: Klaipėda Port and the Young Painter Prize (YPP).