Art-o-rama

Editorial and Drifts galleries present selected works by two younger generation artists – Vika Prokopaviciute (AT) and Morta Jonynaitė (LT) – which employ textile both as a medium and as a certain kind of logic. Weaving, knitting, folding, ironing become a way to tell intimate stories or building spaces or creating movements on a painterly surface.

Vienna-based artist Vika Prokopaviciute “weaves” her paintings into dizzying patterns that sometimes resemble close-ups of folds, textures or endless mesh. She laboriously plays with details, layers and repetitions in order to create spatial and even sculptural qualities of the paintings. Through media-based artistry and recurring patterns and elements that travel from one painting to another, the artist constructs her internal logic structure as if building a language that the viewer needs to learn over time.

By exploring the environment through tactility, Morta Jonynaitė tries to grasp different phenomena using traditional textile techniques. Hand weaving and knotting are archaic crafts with a clear grid, which she employs to weave stories that capture the present. Often presenting her work in the form of installation, she constructs intimate spaces where relationships between different experiences and participants are interconnected. Seemingly fragile and ephemeral pieces contain explosive charge of suppressed desires, sexuality, envy and shame.

Vika Prokopaviciute (b. 1983 in Lithuania) . Since 2012, she has lived and worked in Austria, where she studied painting at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her paintings evolve from one to the next, forming a network, a system. Each painting speculates on the previous one, offering another possible way to comprehend what we are looking at. Painting space turns, bends, cuts open, zooms in and out, bringing the viewer’s perspective into constant flux, inviting them to oscillate between dichotomies and question established structures anew. Recent exhibitions include Systems of Support, Salzburger Kunstverein (2024); Zero-sum, House of Spouse, Vienna (2023, solo); Terminus, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York (2023); nEYEYEght, Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisbon (2023); Van Look Award 2023, E-Werk, Freiburg (2023, solo); Approach, Coulisse Gallery, Stockholm; Very Accessible Painting, Trust, Vienna (2022, solo); How exactly like the object, how beautiful! How exactly like the object, how ugly! Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna (2022); Niche, Editorial, Vilnius (2022, solo); Odd Attractor, Galerija Vartai, Vilnius (2021); Pale Echo, NEVVEN, Gothenburg (2021, solo).

Morta Jonynaitė (b. 1995 in Lithuania, where she currently lives and works). In 2020, she graduated from Gerrit Rietveld Academie (NL), TxT (text, theory, textile) department. Exploring the environment through tactility, the artist tries to grasp different phenomena using traditional textile techniques. Hand weaving and knotting are archaic crafts with a clear grid, which she employs to weave stories that capture the present. Presenting her work in the form of installation, Jonynaitė constructs intimate spaces where relationships between different experiences and participants are interconnected. Recent exhibitions include Dryads of Cosquer, La Traverse, Marseille (2024); Breathing through the eyes, L’Atlas Gallery, Paris (2023); Innocence Becomes Sharks, InTheCloset Gallery, Vilnius (2023, solo); Hold Me Tender, Tallinn Art Hall Lasnamäe Pavilion, Tallin (2023); Shuttle and Twill, Anastazija and Antanas Tamošaitis gallery Židinys, Vilnius (2023); JCDecaux Award 2022: Waves of Opportunity, Artists’ Association Gallery, Vilnius (2022); FITE – Le Festival International des Textiles Extraordinaires, Clermont-Ferrand, France (2022), Square Root, UMI gallery, Vilnius (2022, solo), Bias Cut, Marcinkonys Train Station, Marcinkonys, Lithuania (2021, solo). Upcoming solo exhibition Light Rain with Big Drops at Drifts gallery, Vilnius (November 2024).

The project is financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius City Municipality.

Photography: Editorial