Adomas Danusevičius
Adomas Danusevičius. Installation “Mother of Pearls”. Vartai Gallery, 2019. Photo Laurynas Skeisgiela
Adomas Danusevičius (born 1984) was recognized, within the wider context of Lithuanian painting, for his unique creative style and for his distinctive treatment of masculinity in his first solo exhibition in 2008. The painter is interested in masculinity as a social and cultural construct. Narrative compositions in his paintings and drawings, such as scenes from typically male domains (e.g. sports or the military), become a space where power is demonstrated and desire is projected.
During his doctoral studies in 2012-2016, the artist gradually abandoned his narrative compositions and began concentrating on sexuality as an aesthetic. Danusevičius began this search with abstract portraits filled with cultural signs (flowers, beards) using an expressionist painting style that is culturally associated with male vitality. He later moved on to almost entirely abstract compositions that resemble parts of the male anatomy or phallus-shaped mushrooms. The combination of abstraction, concreteness and materiality was important to the artist in rethinking sexuality as an aesthetic, so he then expanded the ‘Penis Mushroom Series’ (2016) to include ceramic objects, which he continues to make to this day. Gradually, his works have acquired a lighter quality in terms of subject and technique, exemplified in the ‘Magical Camp’ series (2018). Its characters consist of brightly coloured and rather non-specific carnival attendees. They are installed in compact central compositions which accentuate their subversive joy of not-getting-used-to-ness rather than loneliness or estrangement.
Adomas Danusevičius graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Art in 2016 with a doctoral degree in Art. He has held solo exhibitions at the International Artists’ House Villa Concordia in Bamberg (Germany), SODA gallery in Bratislava, Atelier am Eck in Dusseldorf, LARMgalleri in Copenhagen, The Rooster Gallery, Vartai Gallery, and Tulips & Roses in Vilnius; and art fairs such as ArtVilnius (2019) and Artissima (2017). He has taken part in group shows at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, Triumph gallery in Moscow, Art House gallery in The Hague, the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Katzen Arts Center at American University in Washington, D.C., Knoll Galerie Wien in Vienna, and elsewhere. He won third place in the Young Painter Prize project (2010), and was given the Bavarian State Ministry award for Education, Culture, Science and Arts (2018).