Viktorija Kemeklė "Phantasia" 2025.08.11-09.08


‘And it gets particularly dark when there isn’t a single eye left to stare persistently into the darkness.’
– Romualdas Granauskas.
We can move and seek our goals in various ways: by car, by imagination, or simply by focusing our gaze. Which, by the way, always goes astray, ever-enticed by the aluring depths of darkness, or aroused by bright sources of light.
Hidden in the soil are honeycomb-like dream formations, like tree roots that feed and inform each other. We may not be destined to learn of all the mysteries of the earth, or to see the eyes of mountains, or meet mystical creatures. But sometimes, for a split-second, there is a flash, a haunting hallucination, and for a moment, they appear in a glow.
We are not the only ones moving – something is also moving towards us. Preying, defensive, or perhaps frigthening, the eyes (headlights) of some cars illuminate the darknes of other objects.
Viktorija Kemeklė evokes a certain state of unease by anthropomorphising means of mobility, giving them an intangible or, on the contrary, primitively recognisable objectness, all enveloped in expressive black. Forming in the artist’s paintings are transit routes between worlds: the networked, viscous reality opens channels, possibilities for the appearance, materialisation, or imagining, of the other, (un)seen, captured in a dream, emerging from the unconscious, a sign, or object, of destiny.
The series combines several dimensions – the underworld, the action on the ground, and the mystical intersection of real image and the subconscious. All of them become flights of fancy echoing one another. The same image construction or symbol often carries over from one work into the next. One work shadows another or is populated with the experiences of the one before. And perhaps this is how, by sharing a collective darkness, we find the light within.
Light is sought by reflecting on human life and character: the creation of connections, (non)presence, and solitude. Take for instance the juxtaposition of human-animal-car silhuettes. Rolling down the hill, following each other in busy traffic, the cars are the prowling predatory cats of our time. Isolation and movement. The ambivalence echoes the rules of the urban jungle. Winking from the canvas, these ‘metal animals’ evoke a sense of mystery, while the painting itself combines all these realities into one.
Tranquillity is also sought, albeit in prop form. Plastic palm trees, elaborate fountains installed in underground Cold-War-era bunkers, built to protect against atomic bombs – a life reserved for day X. For Kemeklė, this plastic comfort and detachment from reality equates to a loss of (animalistic) instincts. The same applies to the synthetic horizon, when stars in the sky fade and give way to headlights, glowing windows, and streetlamps. The life between dawn and dusk, between inner glow and darkness, unfolds in the company of at least several watchful eyes. And fantasies.
Viktorija Kemeklė (b. 1999) is a young-generation artist and painter based in Vilnius, member of the Lithuanian Artist’s Association since 2024. She graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in painting, and participated in a student exchange programme in Reims, France during her studies. Since 2020, she has held solo exhibitions and participated in group shows and projects, such as Art Without a Roof (Menas be stogo). In 2024, her painting was a warded the Special Jury Prize at the Zabolis Art Prize competition.
Text by: Viktorija Mištautaitė
Graphic Design: Kornelija Skarolskytė
Copy Editor: Dangė Vitkienė
Translation: Paulius Balčytis
Exhibition Sponsor: Vilnius City Municipality