October 2023 – Tadas Gutauskas together with Audrius Gražys participated in the international art fair “ArtVilnius’23”.
Contemporary Lithuanian artist Tadas Gutauskas recently presented his new sculpture series “Shamans (2023)“. He speaks in art forms that resemble the aesthetics of primitive, naive or native art. His old-fashioned, blackened antique-like bronze images are very dynamic, associatively decorative and very close to signs or logotypes.
The Shamans resemble wizards converted into animals. However, they are quite animistic, transcendental, difficult to recognise, strangely distorted features of the human soul, in the form of images of ancestors with the masks of spirits, like totem poles with shadows, or strange mythical beings.
The artist unexpectedly combines the volumetric spatial character of sculptures with the prevailing facade, flattened and iconic ornamental aspect of their perception (pasakyta – representation). The soft biomorphic plasticity of the sculptures gives the impression of heated, flexible and flowing metal. Here the artist’s turn to biomorphic concept of the human body is strongly felt, when body parts resemble plant trunks, stems, branches or leaves. Human forms here are full of plant and animal vitality.
The magical power of these sculptures also lies in their alliance with the emptiness of the holes, as if an interaction of moving bodies with air, wind, matter and the ethereal or astral occultic space. Such a hollowness of the forms of Gutauskas’ sculptures undoubtedly reminds the viewer of the language and symbolism of primitive religious art.
The shadows of these sculptures are also extremely expressive, extending the life of works into a form alternative to light. The transformation of material corporeality into “otherworldly” states is also evident in the associations of the sculptures with the forms of tongues of campfire flames. Or perhaps they resemble images of moving figures, as if originating from the dance of mystical magicians at the fire altar. The sculptures are rich in associations with mythological birds, fishes, Trees of Life and their blossoms, and the Lord of nature.
The compositional structure and form of the “Shamans” sculptures are completely different from the classical tradition and testifies to the uniqueness of the artist’s path.
Vytautas Tumėnas, PhD in humanities, art historian, ethnologist
Video about TaDas sculptures „The Shamans“: https://youtu.be/mNwjhhbJ9JA
