Mantas Platūkis Lithuanian, b. 1999
Mantas platūkis explores the changing life of technical images - the point at which documentary fact gives way to symbolic meaning.
Mantas Platūkis is a Lithuanian painter whose work examines how technical images lose their documentary function as they pass through reproduction, memory, and time. Working from photographs, film stills, magazine images, and Polaroids, he treats these sources not as records of reality but as images already detached from the circumstances that first produced them.
His paintings occupy the point at which an image remains recognisable while no longer carrying its original certainty. Blurred, stretched, or partially obscured, familiar forms gradually become symbolic, revealing how repetition and circulation continually reshape the meanings images are able to hold.
Mantas Platūkis completed both his BA and MA in Painting at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, graduating cum laude in 2025. His recent solo exhibitions include Zugzwang (Pamėnkalnio Gallery, Vilnius, 2025) and Replica (Arka Gallery, Vilnius, 2023). He received Third Prize at the Zabolis Art Prize in 2025, following the People's Choice Award in 2024.
Mantas Platūkis is represented by Galerija VARTAI.
ARTISTIC PRACTICE
Mantas Platūkis approaches painting through images that have already passed through other media. Photographs, film stills, magazine reproductions, Polaroids, and historical documents become the starting point for works that examine how an image changes once it is translated into paint. Rather than preserving its original meaning, the painting becomes another stage in the image's circulation, where information is gradually obscured and reinterpreted.
Central to Platūkis's practice is the idea that images rarely remain stable. Familiar images are cropped, enlarged, blurred, or repeated until their documentary function begins to dissolve. As they move further from their original context, they acquire new symbolic associations, revealing how reproduction and memory continuously reshape the meanings images are able to carry.
Many of the images that enter his paintings contain concealed political, historical, or cultural references. Rather than making these narratives explicit, Platūkis allows them to remain latent, embedded within seemingly ordinary motifs. His paintings suggest that images rarely communicate transparently—they accumulate histories that are only partially visible, inviting viewers to question what has been omitted or forgotten.
Painting becomes a way of examining not only the image itself, but the conditions through which images acquire authority. By allowing the process of translation to remain visible, Platūkis reveals how every reproduction carries the possibility of becoming something entirely different.
EDUCATION
2023–2025 – Painting (MA), Vilnius Academy of Arts (cum laude), Vilnius (Lithuania)
2019–2023 – Painting (BA), Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius (Lithuania)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS (SELECTED)
2025 – Zugzwang, Pamėnkalnio Gallery, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2023 – Replica, Arka Gallery, Vilnius (Lithuania)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTED)
2026 – SMS. WIFI. OK. Baltic New Painting, Viscosa Kultuuritehas, Hiiumaa (Estonia)
2025 – Miražas, Former Building of Vilnius College of Finance and Credit, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2025 – Zabolis Art Prize Finalists Exhibition, VAA Gallery Titanikas, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2024 – Zabolis Art Prize Finalists Exhibition, VAA Gallery Titanikas, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2023 – Ruja, VAA Gallery Titanikas, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2022 – 225 Years of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2021 – +37.5, VAA Gallery Tapybos koridorius, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2021 – Po vieną, VAA Gallery Tapybos koridorius, Vilnius (Lithuania)
AWARDS
2025 – Third Prize, Zabolis Art Prize, VAA Gallery Titanikas, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2024 – People's Choice Award, Zabolis Art Prize, VAA Gallery Titanikas, Vilnius (Lithuania)
PRINTED SOURCES:
2023 – Brigita Gelžinytė, Literatūra ir Menas, Vienas paveikslas. „Garsas“, 2023-07-21, Nr. 14 (3774).
2023 – Viktorija Mištautaitė, 7MD, Šviesėjimas: Grupinė paroda „Ruja“ VDA parodų salėje „Titanikas“, 2023-04-21, Nr. 16 (1465).
INTERNET SOURCES:
2023 – Brigita Gelžinytė, Literatūra ir Menas, Vienas paveikslas. „Garsas“, 2023-08-02.
2023 – Monika Pakerytė, Artnews.lt, Degantis noras. Grupinė paroda „Ruja” VDA galerijoje „Titanikas”, 2023-04-28.
2023 – Viktorija Mištautaitė, 7MD, Šviesėjimas: Grupinė paroda „Ruja“ VDA parodų salėje „Titanikas“, 2023-04-21.
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