Rimas SAKALAUSKAS


The Lithuanian artist who creates his own apocalypse not by destroying the surrounding world but by throwing us into the emotional states of anxiety, sadness and the sense of the inevitability. Sakalauskas manifests itself through artistic forms, the artist’s favoured and recurrent themes (science, physics and man-transformed nature), forms of matter encountered in his films (liquid, metal), images (soviet buildings, factories, monoliths) and the overall rendition of the world in the nihilist key. These elements brand the artist’s method, making his creative stages and evolution intuitively predictable, yet his works are no way boring or the same. He keeps abreast of technological innovations and takes challenges. The conceptual for him is equally important with the visual. Having mastered computerised technologies, the artist has gradually got to “shifting” static objects, circling them around, to “melting” buildings, factories or sculptures. While in his early work, it was his parents, siblings or close friends, who agreed to be used as characters, with the perfection of technological assets this has changed to the extent where people, animal organs or other real protagonists have disappeared from his film and video work. He often creates a repetitive and monotonous picture, placing the mystical, invented imagery into such environments where these alien bodies bare cast like real, while the ominous sight – extremely attractive. It is no secret that Sakalauskas was expelled from the Academy of Arts of Vilnius for damaging school property in an explosion caused during one experiment in Nida. When he resumed studies, he impressively graduated, presenting his BA work Synchronization (2009), to be awarded the Lithuanian Silver Crane. It also led the author to a significant national and international recognition. The work became part of the Modern Art Centre collection, it visited over 70 art festivals from Vilnius to New York, to Brazil, wining a dozen of main prizes For several years already he has been collaborating with the leading Lithuanian stage directors Oskaras Koršunovas, Artūras Areima and musician Gidon Kremer. The video projection, when used at the theatre or concert, usually renders a dream, a hallucination or is employed to emphasize an inner state of a protagonist; it sets a mood and atmosphere. The deeply atmospheric films by Sakalauskas are highly suitable for the theatre, no wonder his work for the drama stage have been noted early on. Last year the young artist won Golden Stage Cross for his video projection for theater production, and this year won a Prize as The best young artist (under 35) of ArtVilnius 2018.