KAIDO OLE AND JONAS GASIŪNAS PAINTING EXHIBITION "I MAESTRI DEL MACABRO"

2023 November 3–25, at Šiauliai Art Gallery is open the painting exhibition „I Maestri del Macabro” („Masters of Wonders”) by Kaido Ole (EE) and Jonas Gasiūnas (LT) is open. Exhibition coordinator – Brigita Gelžinytė.

I’ll be slowly drinking for you
cheap red wine
Do you know that you know what you know
of our distant mainland.
(L. Jakimavičius)

„I Maestri del Colore” (or „Masters of Colors”) – a well-known series of art magazines, 1963-1967 mass-produced in Italy during the economic boom. This small weekly magazine, sold at almost every newsstand, was designed to present the most important figures and movements of the history of painting in a clear and concise manner. It was a hugely successful project that quickly turned into a cultural and social phenomenon shaping the art consumption of the mass public. Similar to the effect of what during the Soviet era was caused by a well-known book-series “World Literature Library” in Lithuania, collecting these art magazines soon acquired a symbolic value of belonging to a certain social class.
„I Maestri del Macabro” is a non-existent continuation of this series, created in 2020–2023, and presented in this exhibition. Two artists, who never appeared in the aforementioned series, although certainly matured in its context, use painful irony and self-reflection to question our habits of art’s “consumption”, institutionalized art conventions, and finally, their own tragicomic spectral existence.
Kaido Ole and Jonas Gasiūnas’ tandem is testing itself for the fourth time in the joint exhibition. Even though they are artists of completely different styles and expressions, every now and then they meet where nature no longer recognizes itself, where the necessity of a conscious bluff arises, where any trace of authenticity is immediately denounced, where no form, style and genre can be trusted. Ole’s works can be characterized by a conceptually reinterpreted naturalism echoing computer graphics, his material strokes are refined to an insane precision, figures almost always appearing in monumental formats. All this paradoxically contrasts with the self-simulation presented in the paintings, as if they were offering a macabre paraphrase of Gulliver’s Travels. Here, the dwarf Kaido, standing on the giant Ole, is descending into an unknown future. While the giant in Gasiūnas’ “Refugee” doesn’t even know where he is. In Gasiūnas’ paintings, we can sense that macabric feeling in his peculiar effort to deconstruct the hierarchy of classical colourist painting tradition: the abstract, ephemeral, forever dispersing black smoke becomes the only character narrating the plot, the only trace of materiality, hiding emptiness as much as ridiculing it. On the other hand, it is also the tattooed body of the painting, a ritual imprint, an attempt to take leave, and – most importantly – the most obvious proof that ghosts really exist. Reaching the state of almost sacred absurdity, the works of these artists find themselves in that grey zone in which we constantly negotiate with reality – between devotion and cynical denial, between naive optimism and clear defeat. In this way, the conspiracy of these masters of the macabre writes its own macabre history, yet no longer asking, what does it mean to be on the periphery or, in Gombrowicz’s words, to be “not quite” someone – not quite a painter, not quite a colourist, not quite a European, not quite a human-being (?). For, as he puts it, “it was a matter of no less than exchanging a man who had form for a man who produces form”.

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The exhibition is part of the contemporary art and fashion festival VIRUS’28.

The festival is financed by Šiauliai City Municipality and the Lithuanian council for culture

Organizer – Šiauliai Art Gallery

The main information partner is Lithuanian National Radio and Television

Partners and sponsors: news portal „Etaplius”, AB „Šiaulių bankas”, UAB „Laurema”, UAB „Gorila reklama”, AB „Vilniaus Pergalė”, „Soya Asia”, KĮ „Polifonija”, State Drama Theater of Šiaulių, Šiaulių Didždvaris Gymnasium , Šiauliai Athletics and Wellness Center, MO Museum, Lithuanian National Art Museum, Šiauliai State College, Šiauliai Technology Training Center, dance troupe „NUEPIKO”, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius College of Design, Krakow Art School, Krakow Fashion Week, Estonian Academy of Arts, Latvian Academy of Arts, UAB „Virginijus ir Ko”, Šiauliai „Dagilėlis” Singing School, Lviv Fashion Week

The author of the festival design is Marius Žalneravičius