rytas jurgelis balta upė

The white river

 

 

Balta upė (White River) is dedicated to the reflections of time’s passage and process of painting. The process of painting is reflected in author’s “little squares” technique which he uses since 1995. Formally it correlates with the Colour Field painting. Action painting, colour, wide spaces, “broken” surfaces, structural construction, a complex of separate elements also play an important role in R. Jurgelis works. His paintings because of the non-completion and emphasis of the painting’s process are also related to the abstract expressionism of the passed age. Like in Oriental fine art, R. Jurgelis works embody the passage of the static time. Some of them reminds Buddhist mantras or Byzantine icons (even the square forms reflect this), the artifacts which consciously or subconsciously open the door to the beyond world. The conceptualization of the history of art, an innovative, personalized attitude towards a non-figure, particular painting (which, because of its fragmentation, left some crucial gaps in the context of Lithuanian fine art), as well as a conscious aesthetization determine the exeptionism of Balta upė (White River). Jumping from modernism experience R. Jurgelis’s colour field painting is a little bit simulated, presented in playful and imitated way (in the words of R. Magritte, who is claiming and denying at the same time: „It is and it is not an abstract painting“). It encourages the observer to contemplate about where is the beginning and the end of painting process, what are the boundaries of painting themselves and whether it can stop a time, even for a moment. Recently the formats of R. Jurgelis works have been deliberately enlarged and separate structural elements of his paintings are even more “sharpened” in order to „charge” each one of them with some more of the visual perception. Rytas‘ upcoming exhibitions are projected in the form of the installation of objects, which would both physically and emotionally put the audience into the Balta upė (White River) and its prophecies.

 

Art Studies Doctor Vidas Poškus