The hyperrealistic images created by Gintaras Znamierowski also look nothing like painting, despite his use of paint on canvas. Znamierowski recreates, references and incorporates marginal examples of modernist painting. To Piet Mondrian’s final painting he added yellow smiley-faced tablets. Mondrian’s motifs and Kazimir Malevich’s black square return in the politically incorrect series Sena feministė (Old Feminist, 2007-2008) and in works aiming a critical eye at artistic institutions.

 

Some artists refrained from referencing specific works, instead choosing to utilise historical and antiquated means of expression in an apparent attempt to demonstrate that these were still useful in the creation of new paintings. Sigitas Staniūnas sought inspiration from travels to distant and exotic countries, painting enchanting visions on large canvases with multiple smooth and clear layers. His paintings are replete with fantastic plants, with mysterious creatures dressed in the clothing of past eras emerging from the denseness of the jungle. The realistic, enlarged bodies and faces painted by Žigymantas Augustinas in the confined spaces of his paintings are reminiscent of works created by the late 20th century master of figure painting Lucian Freud. One of the artist’s favorite themes was the depiction of enlarged, derisively deformed images presented from unusual perspectives.

 

The artist’s own image is inseparable from introspection of the painting in works by Andrius Zakarauskas. Almost all of his paintings are full-length self-portraits. The artist’s figure is usually repeated multiple times like the structural element associated with certain painting and vision processes. This could take the form of a painting within a painting, in both of which Zakarauskas portrays himself observing his own creation, assuming the roles of painter, model and observer. In other works, he depicts anamorphic reflections in a vortex swirling into a bottomless space or a net resembling cloth. Zakarauskas mocks the politics of painting, “authentic” brush strokes and the view of paintings as artifacts. Although he uses only a few colours — black, blue, and gray — his broad, posterly paintings create the impression of endless space. The strong, broad and straight strokes that often appear in his works (traits also shared by Gudaitis, Karatajus and Dereškevičius) are not only a means of expression, but also the object being visualised.

 

The younger generation of painters often tell their stories with rapidly painted images (such as in the work of Adomas Danusevičius) or explore the spacial structure of the imagined painting (Povilas Ramanauskas, Rosanda Sorakaitė). Jolanta Kyzikaitė uses a comic book style to paint large montage compositions, interweaving her own experiences with images from popular culture. Rūta Povilaitytė assembles masked creatures and images of objects like sketches on a sheet of notebook paper. The paintings of Staselė Jakunskaitė appear to have been created using simple stencils to visualise linguistic clichés. Jūratė Jarulytė’s hyperrealistic paintings, meanwhile, depict mysterious constructions resembling nautical equipment.