Trys raktai į Lauros Guokės kūrybą. (Lithuanian)
In: Daile, 2022-07-01, Heft 89, S. 45-53
serialPeriodical
Zugriff:
The work of artist Laura Guokė is an atypical phenomenon in the contemporary Lithuanian art field. On the one hand, having held over 20 solo exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad, she has won prestigious international awards and has significantly represented Lithuania in exhibitions and projects around the world (in the UK, Germany, Austria, Italy, the USA, etc.), but on the other hand, she hardly fits into the local art context. In order to understand Laura Guokė's distinctive work, I propose three conditional keys. The first key is to open an imaginary room with many "drawers", into which evaluators usually try to fit artists, assigning them to one or another artistic field, stylistics, artistic tendency, or grouping. In this sequence, it is difficult to find a specific "drawer" for Laura Guokė's work. Not shying away from challenges, the artist uses not only painterly plasticity, but also a variety of other media in her work: drawing and painting, sculptural form and video, installation and engineering technologies as equal components of an idea, process, and visual expression. A professional graphic artist by training, she has received the most prestigious international awards for her paintings and projects combining painting and video projections: at the BP Portrait Award, held annually by the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London, Laura Guokė was the winner of the Travel Award for her portrait Petras (acrylic on canvas, 146 x 200 cm), and as one of the six artists in the world to have won the award, she was featured in the 2019 BBC documentary, Portrait of an Artist (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n3ct6mj6); in 2018, she was awarded the First Prize in the International Three Bridges Foundation Competition (Poland) for her painting Benny from Aleppo (oil, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 100 cm); in 2021, she was awarded the Special Prize of Independent Film Critics Premio Boccalino d'Oro 2021 Locarno at the Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland) for the artistic painting and video project Three Worlds (painting Pieta and two video works, 17 min. 13 sec. each). Her most recent award was First Prize in the category of Figurative Artworks at the Chianciano Biennale (Museo d'Arte di Chianciano, Rome, Italy). With the second key, let us open the spaces of Laura Guokė's creative ideas, where two layers intertwine: the enigma of human existence, which she explores by delving deeper into the subconscious processes through philosophical reflections, self-contemplation, and inner intuitions; and socially relevant topics (migration, war, women's place in society, etc.). In the multifaceted gallery of contemporary art "faces", the artist creates a highly impactful image of a contemporary, as a reflection of reality, as a document of living time. Some of the artist's works (e.g., Destroyed Universe, 2012; Room of Choice, 2015, Easy Choice, 2020, Choice I, 2022) sound almost prophetic - as a premonition of an impending threat, an apocalypse for the world. However, the artist speaks about it calmly, believing that the counterbalance to evil is the good that comes from creativity. Let us try to apply the third key to the images created by the artist. The uniqueness of Laura Guokė's work is determined not only by her committed civic stance and her distinctive view of the world, but also by her specific artistic language and her professional (perfectionist) plastic expression: she strives for the work to have an equal impact on the perceiver at the levels of thought, emotion, and aesthetic. The specific expression of Laura Guokė's work could be conditionally described as a conceptual documentary, which is based both on the principles of classical (historical) art and their interpretations, which reflect the contemporary concept of 21st-century art. The artist's work is guided by two related dimensions: real events and generic archetypes or biblical images, which, not unlike sacred art, contain many symbolic meanings. On the one hand, the artist is close to the principles of figurative (material) painting: volume and space, linear perspective, and the effective modeling of three-dimensional form by means of the relationship between light and shadows, as in Caravaggio's paintings. On the other hand, Laura Guokė, who is proficient in academic drawing and classical painting techniques, also uses digital photography as source material. However, the basis of her works is not an enlarged copy of a photographic image, but an original drawing, which in the process of creation becomes a nuanced pastose painting. Therefore, unlike the label of photorealism, hyperrealism, or super-realism that is often "stuck on" the artist, she does not imitate the photographic image but creates a new reality, which reflects her own inner feeling. Laura Guokė's work requires not only concentration from the audience, but also a certain intellectual preparation. And for those who are overwhelmed by the incredible realism of the images and the illusion of reality, close to 3D, it is worth remembering an often forgotten truth that every work of art is a newly created world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Menininkės Lauros Guokės kūryba - netipinis reiškinys nūdienio Lietuvos meno lauke. Viena vertus, ji jau surengė 20 asmeninių parodų Lietuvoje ir užsienyje, pelno prestižinius tarptautinius apdovanojimus, reikšmingai atstovauja Lietuvai parodose ir projektuose pasaulyje (Didžiojoje Britanijoje, Vokietijoje, Austrijoje, Italijoje, JAV ir kt.), antra vertus, sunkiai pritampa prie vietinio dailės konteksto, kurį formuoja arba tradicinis XX a. modernizmo suvokimas, arba Naujojo meno nuostatos, kurios, pasak Erikos Grigoravičienės, radosi kaip „alternatyva ir opozicija tradicinėms dailės rūšims"1. Tačiau tarp šių dviejų lietuvių mene įteisintų grandžių pasauliniame nūdienio meno lauke plyti didžiulė šiuolaikinio meno medijų, stilių, raiškos įvairovė, aprėpianti ne tik vizualųjį meną, bet ir muziką, šokį, teatrą, judantį vaizdą, dizainą, naująsias medijas bei daugybę hibridinių formų. Suvokti tą įvairovę geriausi įrankiai - smalsumas, imlus protas ir atvirumas dialogui. To labiausiai pasigendama gana provincialioje lietuviško meno aplinkoje, kai, nepakankamai išmanant nūdienio meno procesus ar menkai jais domintis, vieno ar kito menininko kūrybai neretai skelbiamas vienareikšmis nuosprendis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Titel: |
Trys raktai į Lauros Guokės kūrybą. (Lithuanian)
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Zovienė, Danutė |
Zeitschrift: | Daile, 2022-07-01, Heft 89, S. 45-53 |
Veröffentlichung: | 2022 |
Medientyp: | serialPeriodical |
ISSN: | 0130-6626 (print) |
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