Vartai Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by the young generation painter Adomas Danusevičius. For over a decade, the artist’s name has occupied a special place on the Lithuanian art scene because of the sexual identity issues he addresses and the queer aesthetic central to his work.
Lately, however, the work of the artist, who commutes between Vilnius and London, has marked a new stage in his creative career. In these new pieces, painting has become an alchemical process, while the transcultural, transhistorical images of masculinity and femininity allude to the cyclic and hybrid nature of life, and the energy that is constantly circulating between matter and form.
Mud and flowers are universally perceived mythical images ingrained in humanity’s bodily memory like plant seeds or mushroom spores buried in soil. When watered, the roots of life pulsate and thrive in the mud. It was out of mud – formless and lowly – that the gods moulded humans to populate the Earth and struggle with their nature. It is precisely the ‘metaphysics of mud’ that opens the gates to the primeval hybridity of life, the unquenchable desire to change, procreate, occupy new territories, and rule through the capricious play of the cosmic Eros.
The creative and destructive primal energy in Adomas Danusevičius works mutates and flirts playfully, sometimes taking us the viewers to the underground quagmire of the subconscious and at other times submerging us into heady hallucinations of blossoms. Social and gender identities intermix, coalesce, and again transform into formless matter bursting with endless potential. The recurring nature motifs are vibrant, charming, enigmatic, and simultaneously sexually ambivalent, flirting with the viewer’s senses.

Maecenas
Živilė ir Jonas Garbaravičiai

Patron
Renata ir Rolandas Valiūnai

Supporters of the exhibition
Vilniaus miesto savivaldybė, VšĮ „Meno fondas“, Vilma Dagilienė, Romas Kinka, Clear Channel, „Lietuvos rytas“, „Ekskomisarų biuras“

Graphic design
Laura Grigaliūnaitė

Text author
Jolanta Marcišauskytė-Jurašienė