Contemporary Painting and Analogue Animation Exhibition “Figurality” by Darius Jaruševičius and Ina Šilina

From February 20 to March 14, 2026, the Šiaulių dailės galerija presents the contemporary painting and analog animation exhibition “Figūralumas” by Darius Jaruševičius and Ina Šilina.

The exhibition opening will take place on Friday, February 20, at 5:00 PM. Admission is free during the opening event.

CONTEMPORARY PAINTING AND ANALOGUE ANIMATION EXHIBITION
“FIGURALITY”

The creative duo behind “Polyrabbit.Duplicate” – Darius Jaruševičius and Ina Šilina – transfer the authorship of film and painting to an animated character that produces documentary narratives through diverse painterly forms. “Polyrabbit.Duplicate” is the protagonist of the hand-crafted mockumentary (fictional documentary) animation series of the same name, embodying the contemporary media consumer who experiences and perceives the external world through screens. Created more than a decade ago, the character – anachronistic in form – has become an analogue, virtually generated painterly intermediary (agent) devised by Jaruševičius and Šilina.

Drawing on philosopher Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of the figural, which distinguishes sensual, inarticulable experience (figurality) from systems of signs and representation (figuration), Polyrabbit seeks to overcome representation. The projection of animated imagery onto found, discarded carpets becomes a model later slowly and roughly repainted. This process – positioned between instantaneous digital projection and the dense physical act of painting – creates tension and a distinctive “creepy” aesthetic. Buffoonery and the deformation of narrative release affect, transforming figures into figural presences that act upon the viewer not through comprehension but through sensation.

“Polyrabbit.Duplicate” aims to transcend representation within figurative painting and animation. In Polyrabbit’s practice, the relationship between painting and irony is central; the authors describe it as “creepy figurativism.” Polyrabbit illustrates clichés, artificially and roughly homogenizing the formation of one of Algirdas Julius Greimas’s key semiotic concepts – the ensemble of meaning. By buffoonizing the narrativity of both the mockumentary series and the paintings, narrative structures undergo intense pressure. Forcefully flattened, expressive meanings of figures tighten the bonds of the ensemble of meaning. Homogenized figural meanings become “creepy” and release affect, which turns figures into figural entities.

In painting, “Polyrabbit.Duplicate” operates as a singular point marked by a high density of corporeality. One of the essential conditions of figurality – catastrophe – is understood in Polyrabbit’s practice as the unpredictable impact of painterly matter and gesture upon the figurative image. This idea was articulated by philosopher Gilles Deleuze in The Logic of Sensation, in his analysis of Francis Bacon’s work. According to Deleuze, one of the fundamental tasks of both painting and philosophy is the overcoming of representation, a process that moves culture toward emancipation. In order to free themselves from clichés, narrativity, and signification, painters must reach secondary figuration – achieving figurality by overcoming the figurative.

Francis Bacon disrupted figures in his paintings through diagrams: accidental gestures, stains, and strokes that force the painting to confront catastrophe. According to Bacon, abstract painting fails to emerge from catastrophe and turns into a swamp. To move beyond it, the painter must retain a figurative given yet ultimately achieve figurality.

In “Polyrabbit.Duplicate,” catastrophe occurs when the figurative animated image in the digital environment encounters the surface of carpets, and this collision is later explored materially. The projection of animation onto carpet becomes an unrepeatable model that is then “repainted,” copied onto an extremely dense material – the carpet itself.

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Darius Jaruševičius and Ina Šilina are independent animation filmmakers actively participating in international film festivals. In 2010, the duo received the Silver Crane award. Darius Jaruševičius curates independent site-specific exhibitions of contemporary painting and participates in group exhibitions as a painter experimenting with dense painterly matter and investigating its non-representational dimension. Ina Šilina is a journalist, screenwriter, writer, and educator. After many years collaborating with the independent media platform Nara, she currently produces podcasts for LRT on political, historical, and anthropological themes.

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Dear visitors, by attending exhibition openings, you agree that they may be filmed or photographed, and that images may be published on the Šiauliai Art Gallery website, in the media, or on social networks.