Valentukonis Mantas

Mantas Valentukonis (b. 1998) is a young generation painter, in whose canvases the spaces of reality and digitality overlap. The matrices of realism and virtuality in Mantas’ works are in a certain sense in conflict – the planes of the picture that often collide are separated by different painting techniques, thus highlighting the visual and conceptual difference between the two. However, the figures seen in the canvases are almost always digital, not belonging to the realm of physical reality alone. Such play of vital and non-vital elements of the picture seems to create a transductive relationship – transferring information of a different nature between the selected motifs. The narrative of the painting that emerges from this relationship also includes at least two different planes – the one of digitality and one of the reality. In some of Valentukonis’ paintings, a white-gray grid adopted from computer image editing programs can be seen, suggesting the absence of the image background. Arranged on the edges of the canvas, it seems to extend the plot of the painting beyond the frames of the physical format of the painting or indicates that it functions separately from the environment surrounding the painting, in a unique in between and betwixt painting space. The interplay of pictorial intimacy and digital anonymity in the artist’s canvases also determines the duality of the depicted characters: they are neither purely physical, nor technical, neither real, nor virtual, nor completely original, nor reproduced, and the viewer is given the pleasure of recognizing that what causes admiration, is merely an illusionistic visual effect, the artificiality of the artificial. By experimenting with different media and technologies, such as image processing programs, computer games, CGI, photogrammetry or augmented reality, the artist searches for visual language as a work of art.
Alberta Vengrytė text

Mantas Valentukonis (b. 1998) completed his BA in Painting at the Kaunas Faculty of the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2023. His work has been exhibited in solo and group
exhibitions such as Dymaxion at KKKC in Klaipėda (2025, duo exhibition), From Within at MO museum in Vilnius (2024-2025), Zabolis Art Prize 2025 finalists’
exhibition at Titanic Exhibition Hall in Vilnius (2025), Intermediate Glooms at Meno Parkas Gallery in Kaunas (2025), Apparitions at Drifts gallery in Vilnius (2024, solo), JCDecaux Award 2024: Fall at Sapieha Palace in Vilnius (2024), The Lithuanian Artists’ Association Quadrennial „LTQ’23: Communities“ at Arka gallery in Vilnius (2023), Drifts. Srovės at Drifts in Vilnius (2022); Younger Painter Prize finalists’ exhibition at Radvila Palace in Vilnius (2022), Other energy, curated by Andrius Zakarauskas at Energy and Technology Museum in Vilnius (2022), Counter-argument V at Meno Parkas gallery in Kaunas (2022), among others. In 2025, Valentukonis was awarded 2nd place in the Zabolis Art Prize and received a Young Painter Prize 2025 Honourable mention.

Lady Died, 2025, video, 2.22. Photo by Laurynas Skeisgiela