Benediktas Marija Žukas Lithuanian, b. 1992

Benediktas Marija Žukas (b. 1992, Lithuania) is a painter who obtained his MA at the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2023. His work is distinguished by a meditative exploration of color, movement, and material presence. Fragmentality and the process is the main focus in his practice. His paintings inhabit the space between intuition and structure, where spontaneous gestures meet balanced compositions. 

Žukas’s style is marked by layered fields of pigment, subtle tonal transitions, and textural complexity. He often works in series, allowing each canvas to evolve through cycles of application, erasure, and rediscovery. This process reveals traces of time and thought, giving the surfaces a sense of quiet intensity. Rather than depicting recognizable forms, his abstractions suggest atmospheres shaped by rhythm, silence, and memory.

Influenced by both the traditions of Lithuanian and European art history and contemporary painting, Žukas seeks to create visual spaces that feel both deeply personal and universally resonant. He describes his practice as a search for a new form of contemporary art where he tries to combine drawing and painting. His works often evoke a sense of stillness emerging from motion, or clarity born out of chaos — an equilibrium that reflects his interest in the emotional undercurrents of perception.

Working primarily with oils and mixed media on canvas, Žukas approaches painting as an act of dialogue with the material itself. Each brushstroke, scrape, and stain becomes a record of presence — a trace of gesture that transcends the purely visual and invites the viewer into a state of reflection.

Žukas has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions in Antwerp (Conscience 20 and Gert Voorjans galleries) Riga (ASNI galerija) and Vilnius (Contemporary Art Gallery Meduza and Vladas Vildžiūnas Art Gallery), as well as in group exhibitions in Lithuania and Belgium. His works are included in private collections in Lithuania, Belgium, Netherlands and Latvia.