Šarūnas Baltrukonis (b. 1998) is a young generation painter, whose canvases combine the spaces of reality and digitality, but both are abstracted, when only certain fragments of them are recognizable – wedges of reality or virtuality, often characterized by urban and/or cybernetic aesthetics. The artist perceives technology and the naturalness of reality as equal spheres of creative influence. Sharp, strict lines of the structures visible in the paintings, clear contrast, screeniness of the images, clean colors – hese are the pictorial tools with which Baltrukonis conveys the intimacy of the digital image. The illusion of the overlapping of two-dimensional and three-dimensional images is evident in the artist’s work, which also presupposes the specific question of the forms belonging to the spaces of reality and virtuality, as an epistemological question of the shifting knowledge about the structures that “ontologically” belong to these spaces. In other words, the motifs in Baltrukonis’ canvases seem to lose their ontological “realism” or “digitality” and enter into a qualitatively new relationship that can be understood through reciprocity. It is the play of two-dimensional and three-dimensional planes here that represents the chiaroscuro of classical painting, deforming the unity of the elements belonging to the picture in relation to space and time. Baltrukonis experiments by deforming the canvas itself, cutting off part of the frame or choosing non-standard exposure angles, which allows the digital image to expand beyond the two-dimensional space of the picture, imitating its being stuck in a virtual matrix. In his latest works, the artist explores the materiality of various objects, their surface textures, with particular emphasis on the temporality and transformation of metal surfaces.

In 2021, Šarūnas Baltrukonis completed his bachelor’s studies in painting at the Kaunas Faculty of Vilnius Academy of Arts. In 2023, he presented a solo exhibition “Nexus” (curated by Alberta Vengrytė) at Drifts gallery in Vilnius. His works have been exhibited in group shows, including “Intermediate Glooms” at KKKC in Klaipėda (2024), “Young Painter’s Prize Finalists Exhibition” at the Museum of Applied Arts and Design in Vilnius (2023), The Lithuanian Artists’ Association Quadrennial “LTQ’23: Communities“ at Arka gallery in Vilnius (2023), “Drifts. Srovės” at Drifts gallery (2022), “Counter-Argument V” at Meno Parkas gallery in Kaunas (2022), “Other Energy” (curated by Andrius Zakarauskas) at the Energy and Technology Museum in Vilnius (2022), and others.