GINTAUTAS VELYKIS EXHIBITION "PORTAL AI"

Avatars; apps able to create digital images from just a few words; robots helping to perform surgical operations; artificial intellect that gathers and analyses information in a virtual form... A leap forward of artificial intellect-based technologies is so enormous that they are no longer the plot of fantastic movie scenes, but a true reality. In the art world, the confrontation or a partnership between artificial intellect (AI) and a human being is becoming a hot topic these days. A discussion arises as to who the real author of the work is – an artist or a software developer.

Gintautas Velykis  (b. 1958), the pioneer of digital art in Lithuania, came to creating computer-generated paintings from the pictorial sphere. In 1990–1992 he started painting supernatural plots and fictional motifs realizing his cosmic and transcendental ideas by traditional means of painting. However, the unrealistic subject matters were more suitable for computer painting.

The artist plunged into the jungle of digital painting from the computer-based advertising works and his own artistic technologies created more than three decades ago. The artist’s interest in steampunk stylistics was a major influence. The interpretations of artificial intellect based on the science fiction genre that began to be exploited during the pandemic became a reference to the different world we will live in after the pandemic ends. The works combine emotions of remote communication, discoveries of information technologies, longing for the former life and the aesthetics of colour. The works deal with themes of war, apocalypse, fantasy. Manifold works open up as portals to another world.

An algorithm-based artificial intellect in art opens the door to fantasy. But only the artist’s imagination is capable of making sense of this fantasy. For the first time, Gintautas Velykis’ visions, so abundantly displayed in the exhibition, invite us to dive between reality and virtual world.

Curator Kristina Liepinaitė