VLADIMIRAS  NIKONOVAS

“For me a painter is like a mythical creature, an eccentric alchemist, who actualize their spiritual energy and creates a new object which connects the generosity of diversity and the fullness of peace, the matter and the spirit, the truth of life and the elements of Eternity in a manner known only to them.”

This thought of Algirdas Steponavicius perfectly describes the artist Vladimiras Nikonovas and his artworks. Due to a permanent connection between the inner and the outer, the form and the content, the improvisational structures and the quest for a strictly built rational procedure the creations of  V. Nikonovas come close to the synonym of reality, where by touching material the artist animates this material: he creates birds, fish, fantasy creatures that come to life. Creation is a ritual of resurrection, or according to Antonio Tapies, “an artist is a shaman, who recognizes the true matter and gives it life.”

Not only an animated creature made of old waste of mass production items but also the surface, which allows the creation of this assemblage, is important for V.Nikonovas. It is the assemblage basis that highlights the created creatures, which usually come out from the mysterious, sober depths (a spiritual subconscious of the creator) while emphasizing their own cold metallic shine. This noble shine might be paradoxical by its nature but validates the assertion by A.Tapies that an artist is able to give life to the matter.

Ignas Gleixner

ROMUALDAS INČIRAUSKAS

I hardly consider myself an adult because since my childhood I have been dreaming to be a painter. Relatives remember that at the age of four I used to like to mold from plasticine clay very much. Strangely enough, I am engaged in the same activity at the moment (as I have been my entire life). A single difference is that what I am doing now sometimes becomes bronze or aluminum.

Signs of my maturity:
In my childhood I used to mold what I saw.
Later I used to mold what I knew.
Now I mold what I believe in.

JUOZAS LEBEDNYKAS

A laconic form is a yearning for perfection, and this yearning fills the space with dreams and memories that come to life in the form of soft bronze, stable ceramics or polished stone.

Openness to the characteristics of the matter, the efforts to discover what it is the most relevant to a specific material, what is the greatest potency of this material, as well as its ability to grow and to climb, to transform and to multiply and then suddenly to return to its original form, is my creative aspiration.