Press Release

“And it is very dark when there is not a single eye persistently looking into the darkness.” – Romualdas Granauskas

We move toward our destinations in many ways—by car, through imagination, or simply by fixing our gaze. But the gaze itself is a wanderer, drawn deep into the pull of darkness or startled by sudden bursts of light. Beneath the soil, dream-honeycombs form—hidden structures that, like root systems, nourish and whisper to one another. Not every secret is ours to hear; not every mountain eye to meet; not every mystical creature to greet. Sometimes they come only in a blink—a glimmer, a vision, a hallucination—then vanish again.

Movement is mutual. As we advance, something else approaches. The eyes of some vehicles—predatory, defensive, or eerily still—cast their beams to cut open the darkness surrounding others.

In Phantasia, Kemeklė conjures this unsettled state by anthropomorphizing means of travel, giving them a presence that is both intangible and primitively familiar. Her works are wrapped in an eloquent blackness, weaving double-world passages where reality thickens into a viscous mesh, yet remains threaded with openings—paths through which the unseen might appear: a dream fragment, a sign from fate, a shape risen from the subconscious.

The series unfolds across layered realms—subterranean, terrestrial, and mystical, where the tangible image intersects with the unconscious. Motifs recur and migrate, one work echoing another, each imbued with the memory of the previous. In the shared darkness of these paintings, perhaps we find the faint glimmer of an inner light.

Kemeklė reflects on human vitality—connection, solitude, the tension between presence and absence. Human–animal–car silhouettes emerge like predators of the modern city: cars rolling down a slope or tailing each other in traffic become stealthy cats of our age. Isolation and motion entwine, mirroring the rules of the urban jungle.

There is also the search for refuge, even if artificial: plastic palms, ornate fountains in Cold War bunkers—life preserved for an imagined “day X.” Synthetic horizons where stars fade so that the lights of cars, houses, and streets may flare instead. A life lived between dawn and dusk, between inner light and shadow, always under the gaze of many eyes—and of the imagination itself.

About the Artist
Born in 1999, Viktorija Kemeklė is among Lithuania’s emerging painters. She holds a BA and MA in Painting from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, and has studied in Reims, France, through an exchange program. Since 2020, she has presented solo and group exhibitions, and participated in projects such as Art Without a Roof. A member of the Lithuanian Artists’ Association since 2024, she received the Special Jury Prize at the Zabolis Art Prize the same year. She lives and works in Vilnius.

Exhibition dates: 2025.08.11 – 2025.09.08