17 November 2022 – 13 December 2022
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The new chapter of the “Manifesto of Things” – MIRACLE.
Small miracles happen every once in a while, in ordinary environments. Like uneven electric currents, lamps flashing at intervals. Objects illuminated intermittently by a warning traffic light. The author observes a shadow in that illuminated fraction of a second, which seems strange, false, impossibly not that of the object. That moment is like a miracle, a sign and a motif for the astonished artist.
Dominykas Sidorovas’ main motif is an object, but his research focuses on people and their narratives. The artist uses objects to talk about people, their relationships, events and inner states of mind. In the paintings shown in the exhibition, objects or their shadows become signs, small miracles, and their relations form narratives that outline a person. Sidorovas’ local, fragmented and purified expression is transformed into a somewhat different one. An abundance of characters appears on canvases, as if in a group portrait. For this reason, the theoretical field also becomes more complicated and, as if by a budding method, spreads in the artist’s developing theme.
Firstly, it is our unreal reality, when strange and unbelievable things happen in ordinary life. This part is about events when everything is so surreal that it can only happen in real life, and if someone tried to describe, narrate or re-enact it, they would be accused of hyperbolisation and would not convince anyone. Chains of events whose connections make us wonder, or single objects in a completely unremarkable environment sparkle and inexplicably grab our attention. Huge coincidences of simple everyday life shine for a moment like small miracles.
Secondly, it is the shadows. In these multi-figured compositions, the artist turns his gaze to darkness – the antonym of one of the foundations of painting, which is light. Dominykas Sidorovas is interested in the shadow created by the light (perhaps not completely constant, clear or real) falling on an object. Now the artist as if draws the object across its shadow or background, highlights and perceives the object through its environment. The curved, lengthy, fragmented shadows, only partially reminiscent of their own object, attract the painter with their strangeness, unexpectedness and, one might say, uncertainty.
And thirdly, the construction site. The construction site as a certain state and the construction site as a palette. Road sections being repaired or new houses and blocks of flats being built in the city attract the painter’s attention as a temporary disturbance of the actual visible image, the landscape. Harsh, warning colours intentionally falling out of context, echo in D. Sidorovas’ paintings as signs or phenomena. Unusual colour combinations suddenly seem already seen and completely familiar.
These are the three connecting parts that make up the body of the series, and in the process of their interaction or individual manifestations, strange things can happen. A strange thing, at the end of which you would hear yourself say: – MIRACLE!
Road maintenance workers in bright new uniforms of cobalt blue and orange, working on both sides of a large street, shock the artist with a small electric current as he drives, causing him to stop on the side of the road, to take a breather and note that he has just witnessed another small miracle. (Marius Vabalas)
November 16, 2022
