22° G: Incision

 

On September 1-27, 2025, a series of three exhibitions united by the title 22° G is presented at Vilnius Academy of Arts’ Titanikas exhibition halls and the Akademija and 5 malūnai galleries.

 

The 22° G exhibitions are dedicated to the 220th anniversary of Vilnius Academy of Arts’ Department of Graphic Art and present three generations of artists active in the contemporary art and graphic art scene. The authors featured in the exhibitions include prolific artists of the younger generation who are alumni of the Department of Graphic Art, artists who educate the new generations of graphic artists as tutors at the department, and young artists studying at Vilnius Academy of Arts who associate their professional future with graphic art.

 

The exhibition at the gallery Akademija, 22° G: Incision, presents works by the tutors of the VAA Department of Graphic Art.

Opening on September 1 at 4 pm.

 

We habitually associate graphic art with printmaking. Yes, everything that can be printed, that prints or is printed constitutes graphic art in the broadest sense, no matter what contemporary and unexpected forms it takes. Objects can be printed directly – from a chair or a tombstone to a train carriage; different materials leave their imprints on the different flat surfaces they come into contact with, even sunlight leaves its almost invisible mark over time as it travels through our rooms every day. We imprint our feet in the soft earth – if we printed them, it would be graphic art. Yet before the printing there is another action – carving. Engraving. Incision. In order to print something, you need to carve or incise it, and this action can also be interpreted in the broadest sense.

Not accidentally, the VAA Department of Graphic Art began 220 years ago at the Faculty of Literature and Liberal Arts of Vilnius University as the Department of Engraving, part of Vilnius Art School. The department followed the programme developed by Joseph Saunders as it trained artists for printmaking, i.e. calligraphers and engravers capable of depicting landscapes and portraits, transferring a painting to black and white so that it could be reproduced and circulated. At first glance, it seems that those engravers are light years away from what the tutors of the Department of Graphic Art are preoccupied with today. From artist’s books and the book as an art project – i.e. an artistic body, from installations and sound projects, from focusing on the process rather than on the final result, from interdisciplinary displays, from photopolymers, risography and digital art in various forms.

The department’s teaching staff consists of 20 representatives of different art fields – not only graphic artists. For students to feel part of the art world in general and to ensure that, in addition to learning graphic art techniques and genre specifics, they develop an understanding of working with space and words, the department employs painters and conceptual artists, artists who integrate texts into their work, sculptors and masters of academic drawing. It is not easy to name exactly what holds them all together. Surely, if we do not talk about the context, the same artistic reality and the same art field. Thanks to maestro Saunders for an occasion to remember the origins and carvers. No matter how different the art fields represented by the tutors of the Department of Graphic Arts, they all incise their mark in a sense. They all cut through memory and surface, stone and text, space and canvas.

Incision is not merely a capacious action, but also an extremely capacious metaphor. Jolanta Mikulskytė carves stone, translating her terrestrial and underwater experiences into lithographs; Jonas Čepas literally carves wood, creating colourful, elemental woodcuts; Matas Dūda and Augustas Bidlauskas carve plates, never ceasing to amaze with their mastery of intaglio; Rimvydas Kepežinskas carves ironic shapes with a nib in a calligraphic manner. Elena Grudzinskaitė treat graphic art as research, capturing the routine everyday processes; Marija Marcelionytė-Paliukė makes the line material, controlling space and surface, and carving a tangible trace in space; Eglė Paulina Pukytė notices a building carved into the city and the remains of the carved lines in its silhouette, a kind of urban calligraphy. There is also a distinct textual-visual field: Agnė Dautartaitė-Krutulė carves her mark through an art book, shaping it as a subtle spatial work that unfolds in the viewer’s imagination, Ieva Babilaitė-Ibelhauptienė carves paper, creating text-related works (to which one intuitively applies words, even if there are none in the actual work), Benas Narbutas, whose medals are an unmistakable combination of text, image and volume, cuts not only plaster, but also historical memory. Another field is chromatic (conditionally) – it comprises artists working with colours and paint – oil, acrylic, watercolour: Paulius Juška cuts his state of being through anthropomorphic studies, through the human body, Simonas Kuliešis does so through the landscape while, Austė Jurgelionytė-Varnė, who teaches watercolour at the department, maintains her textile identity that manifests itself through video works this time. Finally, the things that are difficult to name and put into words: Dainius Liškevičius gives context and shape to states that linger in the air. Each of the tutors carve their mark in past and present contexts in their own distinctive way.

There are many incisions and all of them are unique, just like the current carvers who, after 220 years, constitute Vilnius Academy of Arts’ Department of Graphic Art of. Each of them has already left a vivid imprint not only on the present of the department, but also on its recent past and in the memory of students. Meanwhile, this exhibition – a cut through the present – is intended to capture the current state and leave a mark; to carve out its own line in the ever-changing contemporary field of art and academic studies.

 

Curated by Jurgita Ludavičienė

 

Artists: Ieva Babilaitė-Ibelgauptienė, Augustas Bidlauskas, Jonas Čepas, Agnė Dautartaitė-Krutulė, Matas Jonas Dūda, Elena Grudzinskaitė, Austė Jurgelionytė-Varnė, Paulius Juška, Rimvydas Kepežinskas, Simonas Kuliešis, Dainius Liškevičius, Marija Marcelionytė-Paliukė, Jolanta Mikulskytė, Benas Narbutas, Paulina Eglė Pukytė, Kęstutis Vasiliūnas, Titas Antanas Vilkaitis

 

Accompanying events:

 

September 13 (Saturday), 12:30 pm: guided tour of the exhibitions at the VAA Titanikas exhibition halls and the Akademija and 5 malūnai galleries with the curators Elena Grudzinskaitė, Jurgita Ludavičienė and Marija Marcelionytė-Paliukė. Duration of tour – 2 hours.

 

September 13 (Saturday), 3 pm: paper lithography workshop by the artist Saule Budriūnaite at the Vilnius Academy of Arts Graphic Laboratory. Duration of creative workshops – 2 hours.

 

September 27 (Saturday), 12:30 pm: guided tour of the exhibitions at the VAA Titanikas exhibition halls and the Akademija and 5 malūnai galleries with the curators Elena Grudzinskaitė, Jurgita Ludavičienė and Marija Marcelionytė-Paliukė. Duration of tour – 2 hours.

 

September 27 (Saturday), 3 pm: bookbinding workshop by the Arklys publishing initiative at the Vilnius Academy of Arts Graphic Laboratory. Duration of creative workshops – 2 hours.

 

The exhibition is part of the programme of Vilnius Gallery Weekend taking place on September 11–14. More information: http://vilniausgalerijusavaitgalis.lt

 

The project is financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius Academy of Arts

 

Organised by Vilnius Academy of Arts and the Department of Graphic Art

Initiated by Elena Grudzinskaitė

Architecture by Dainius Liškevičius

Graphic design by Jokūbas Griška, Jonė Dūdaitė

Exhibition catalog design by Agnė Dautartaitė-Krutulė, Ūla Norvilaitė

Lithuanian language editor Jurgita Radzevičiūtė

Translator Jurijus Dobriakovas

Partners and support by Media Traffic, www.echogonewrong.com, Vilnius Graphic Art Centre, National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art, Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania 

 

Photos by Anna Chostegian