Petras Lincevičius’ Exhibition “Landscape Fabric” Opens in Kaunas

2025-02-13

On Thursday, February 13, at 6 PM, the exhibition “Landscape Fabric” by Associate Professor of the Painting Department Petras Lincevičius will open at the “Muitinė” Gallery of the Vilnius Academy of Arts Kaunas Faculty (Muitinės St. 2). The exhibition will be on view until March 14.

This exhibition explores the landscape as a dynamic, multi-layered structure where natural, cultural, and historical elements intertwine. Here, the landscape is perceived not as a static panorama but as an ever-changing fabric connecting diverse elements.

Most of the exhibited works were created in 2024 during two consecutive art residencies: Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and Nieuw & Meer in Amsterdam. During these residencies, the artist sought to explore landscapes in a broad sense, experiencing their uniqueness firsthand and capturing the poetics of their constant transformation.

The landscapes of France and the Netherlands have played a significant role in European art history and remain relevant today. Some of them are reflected in the artist’s works, including Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, the Etretat cliffs painted by Impressionists, and the landscapes of Auvers-sur-Oise, which inspired Vincent van Gogh. The exhibition is further enriched by stones found and painted in the Louvre courtyard in Paris and the Rijksmuseum grounds in Amsterdam. These elements transform specific locations into layered spaces that reveal both local identity and ongoing metamorphoses.

For the artist, these historical contexts and figures hold personal significance—they shaped the understanding of site-specific artistic practice and plein air painting. In this way, his creative thread intertwines with the landscapes important to him, including fragments of Šilavotas village in the Prienai district. Just as past artists depicted their landscapes, Lincevičius reinterprets them while also examining his own.

The works created during the art residencies are characterized by an experimental approach. The dynamic environment of local artist communities and shifting cultural contexts encouraged diverse artistic practices, including drawing, painting, photography, and sculptural objects. The exhibition emphasizes processuality—the relationship between landscape transformations and artistic reflection, where each piece and their collective whole form a dialogue with a specific geographic location and a temporarily constructed landscape within the gallery.

Lincevičius’ work can be understood through the concepts of philotopy and genius loci. The former defines a site-rooted thinking process that allows for an engagement with universal and global contexts through a positioned and localized perspective. The latter focuses on the unique characteristics and spirit of specific places. The artist states:
“For me, art is a language through which I can express phenomenological experiences of particular places, as well as analyze material and object-based culture, ultimately reflecting on the theme of local identity in a global society.”

Exhibition duration: until March 14
Visiting hours: Monday–Friday, 2–6 PM