OPEN CALL FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONAL ARTISTS

The Kaunas Picture Gallery announces an open call for young artists (up to 35 years of age) to present applications for the exhibition series THE YOUTH PLATFORM 2026.

The exhibitions of this series not only provide young artists with a space to create, experiment and introduce themselves; this is a chance to meet their audience and establish themselves in the field of professional art. As for museum visitors, it is a nice opportunity to get acquainted with the work of young artists and the themes that are relevant to them.

Artists engaged in a variety of media (video art, sound art, installation, performance art, sculpture, interdisciplinary art, painting, printmaking, illustration, photography, other disciplines) are welcome.

Since the end of 2023, THE YOUTH PLATFORM had implemented four exhibitions: in the exhibition "Re-", a fashion and textile designer Lukrecija Zigmantaitė reflected the ideas of freedom and individuality, as if encoded in the denim fabric. The collection of jeans waistbands and pockets illustrated different epochs, technologies, and themes, although all the exhibited objects revealed that the same ideas of freedom, youth and individuality are closely interrelated. Another exhibition "From a Private Collection" by Julija Račiūnaitė introduced four themes developed in the period 2016–2024. Individual works and their cycles, selected for the exhibition, partly followed the tradition of documenting the typological object. The artist focused on the tendency of collecting, which, in fact, is common to all life-forms and can be treated as a non-committal hobby, on the other hand, it may become an organised obsession, even an obsessive-compulsive derangement. Artist Gretė Labanauskaitė in the exhibition "Try on a Sense" invited people with visual impairments to explore fashion by means of their senses, and the sighted had a possibility to rediscover the benefits and richness of the power of sensation. The fourth exhibition "Hands on Press: archive HOP-002" presented the results of the activities of the Kaunas-based small-run printing house "Hands on Press", which, many years after their creation, were exhibited not only as examples of art and design, but also as valuable historical artefacts.