Benediktas Marija Žukas Lithuanian, b. 1992
Benediktas Marija Žukas treats abstraction as a process rather than an image.
Benediktas Marija Žukas is a Lithuanian painter whose work reconsiders the language of abstraction through gesture, colour and material process. Rather than treating abstraction as a fixed visual vocabulary, he approaches it as a continuously evolving form shaped by revision and chance.
After studying Interior Design at the Vilnius College of Design, Žukas completed an MA in Painting at the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2023. There he developed a practice in which drawing and painting operate as a single process, allowing compositions to emerge through continual revision rather than predetermined form.
His paintings have been presented in solo exhibitions in Lithuania, Belgium and Latvia, and in group exhibitions across Lithuania and Belgium. His works are held in private collections in Lithuania, Belgium, the Netherlands and Latvia.
Benediktas Marija Žukas is represented by Galerija VARTAI.
ARTISTIC PRACTICE
Painting for Benediktas Marija Žukas is a process of continual revision. Images emerge through successive layers of addition and removal, allowing each canvas to record its own development rather than conceal it. What remains visible is not simply a finished composition but the accumulation of decisions that produced it.
Drawing is inseparable from this process. Rather than serving as a preliminary stage, it continues throughout the making of a painting, with lines, stains and gestures moving freely between drawing and paint. This continual exchange allows abstraction to remain open, resisting fixed forms while preserving the physical immediacy of the painted surface.
Working primarily in oil and mixed media, Žukas repeatedly returns to the history of modernist painting without quoting it directly. Gestures and compositional structures inherited from modernist painting are reworked through improvisation, producing images that feel simultaneously inherited and newly formed. His paintings do not seek resolution, but remain suspended at the point where order begins to emerge from uncertainty.
EDUCATION
2021–2023 – MA in Painting, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2010–2014 – BA in Interior Design, Vilnius College of Design, Vilnius (Lithuania)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 – Vilniaus vaikai, Contemporary Art Gallery Medūza, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2023 – Untitled, Vladas Vildžiūnas Gallery, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2022 – The Great Anonymous, Gert Voorjans Gallery, Antwerp (Belgium)
2022 – Savistaba, Lukiškės Prison, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2021 – AA, Galerie Conscience 20, Antwerp (Belgium)
2020 – Tapyba, Arts Printing House, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2018 – Tapyba ant popieriaus, Arts Printing House, Vilnius (Lithuania)
(SELECTED) GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 – Komisas, Duonos Fabrikas, Palanga (Lithuania)
2024 – Komisas, Tech Zity, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2023 – Ruja, Titanikas, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2022 – PPP1, Painting Corridor Gallery, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2020 – Father and Son, Menų Tiltas, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2020 – Kontr-argumentas III, Meno Parkas, Kaunas (Lithuania)
2019 – Summer Edition, Rik Rosseels Gallery, Antwerp (Belgium)
RESIDENCIES
2020 – Wigry Monastery Painting Residency, Wigry (Poland)
COLLECTIONS
Private collections in Lithuania, Belgium, the Netherlands and Latvia.
