Gytis Arošius Lithuanian, b. 1996

ARTISTIC PRACTICE

Gytis Arošius begins each painting with a photograph of an existing place. These images are gradually altered through the addition of imagined structures and historical military machinery, creating environments that belong neither entirely to documented reality nor to speculative fiction. What emerges is not an alternative reality but a familiar one that has quietly shifted.

Brutalist architecture provides an important point of departure throughout the practice. Buildings and industrial structures appear less as subjects than as psychological spaces, carrying traces of power, control, and collective memory. Human figures rarely occupy the foreground; when they appear, they are absorbed into the surrounding structures, becoming almost indistinguishable from them.

Working almost exclusively within a restrained monochromatic palette, Arošius slows the image down. The reduced colour allows attention to settle on atmosphere, scale, and the tension between documentation and invention. His paintings resist dramatic narrative, proposing instead a persistent state of anticipation in which the future feels inseparable from the remains of the past.

Rather than imagining catastrophe itself, Arošius paints the psychological landscape that precedes it. His works examine how memory and expectation become embedded within the spaces we inhabit, allowing architecture to become a record of both historical experience and projected futures.

EDUCATION/RESIDENCIES

2021 – Painting (MA), Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2019 – Painting (BA), Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius (Lithuania)

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2024 – The Absence of the Present, Pamėnkalnio Gallery, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2023 – The Past of Future, Galerija VARTAI, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2022 – Praeities ateitis, Klaipėda Exhibition Hall (KKC), Klaipėda (Lithuania)
2021 – Tinnitus, Galerija Akademija, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2019 – Documentation of Daily Life, Fix in Art Gallery, Thessaloniki (Greece)

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2025 – FinBalt: Under the Surface – Eco Ideologies, ARS Projectroom, Tallinn (Estonia)
2022 – 225 Years of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, VAA Gallery Titanikas, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2022 – Algimantas Švėgžda Drawing Prize Finalists Exhibition, Galerija Akademija, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2022 – Zabolis Art Prize Finalists Exhibition, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2021 – XIII Young Painter Prize Finalists Exhibition, MO Museum, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2020 – (Un)Determined, Museum of Applied Arts and Design, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2020 – Kontr-argumentas 3, Meno Parkas Gallery, Kaunas (Lithuania)
2019 – Marina Biennale, Jūrmala City Museum, Jūrmala (Latvia)
2019 – Showroom, Galerija VARTAI, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2019 – BA Graduate Exhibition, Galerija VARTAI, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2019 – Young Painter Prize Finalists Exhibition, VAA Gallery Titanikas, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2018 – Suplanuotas ekspromtas (with Ieva Sikirkinaitė), Užupis Art Incubator, Vilnius (Lithuania)
2017 – Plenerjumas, Panemunė Castle, Panemunė (Lithuania)
2017 – Reformacija, Krematoriumas Project Space, Vilnius (Lithuania)