Phoenix in folds
The video interview with Vika Prokopavičiūtė in December 2021 feels like a remote studio visit against the backdrop of coming home, coming from Vienna to Vilnius. It seems that Vika’s paintings, displayed at the art gallery Vartai and the artist herself battle one another for control of the explanation about the motivations behind the painting method. The video explores the relationships between the paintings and the layers, forms and shadows that these paintings inhabit. Paintings look as if they are folding, stretching, and dreaming with one another, offering a glimpse into the psychedelic, yet a very controlled system of the art-making of Vika Prokopavičiūtė.
Produced by The Good Neighbour. Questions: Justė Kostikovaitė. Camera & editing: Vytautas Tinteris. Supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture
Vika Prokopaviciute is a painter who lives and works in Vienna. Born in 1983 in Lithuania, she grew up in Russia, where she studied design and architecture and later worked as a graphic designer. 2012 she moved to Austria to study painting at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her abstract works develop from one to the next and form a repertoire, a system. The next painting begins where the preceding one ends. An acting-as-algorithm set of rules adjusts itself during the painting process and leads to a highly associative, poetic, yet mechanical and abstract image. The method becomes a motif. She has recently exhibited at Vartai Gallery, Vilnius; Haus, Vienna; NEVVEN, Göteborg; xhibit, Vienna; nGbK, Berlin; Mauve, Vienna; Skulpturinstitut, Vienna; Heiligenkreuzerhof, Vienna; Kunstverein Eisenstadt, Eisenstadt.