Arūnas Gudaitis. Inesa and Ilona, 2020. Photo Andrej Vasilenko

The work of Arūnas Gudaitis (born 1973) provides a subtle commentary on sociological, ideological, and artistic phenomena. In his early works, he used (pseudo)documentary and performance strategies, while lately he has been working with drawing, object, photography, and video media. In his series ‘White Pieces’ (2007-2008), which mark a new stage of Gudaitis’s work, one can recognize – in the drawings, photographs, and objects – facts and events from politics, history, art history, and everyday life, that combine awareness and wit. 

His works in the series ‘Pieces and Parts’ (2014) conceptualize the history of sculpture and consistently elaborate on themes that interest Gudaitis: the fragmented nature of the history of art and sculpture, the contexts in which a work of art emerges, the duality and paradoxes related to form and material. In the meantime, his latest work ‘Inesa and Ilona’ (2020), based on a work by avant-pop band Tytia Mina Teremina, is a witty tribute to sculpture and song. A double-headed sleek–shaped bust is a portrait of a contradictory symbiosis – an embodiment of the joint voice of liar Inesa and righteous Ilona. A contradiction that captures the artist’s interest allows him to reveal the nuance between the two opposites which can often be overlooked in the quest for objective truth. 

Arūnas Gudaitis studied sculpture at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. He has held solo exhibitions at Kunstraum Aarau in Switzerland, Display Gallery in Prague, apiece gallery in Vilnius, and the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius. He has participated in numerous international group shows including at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, the Tallinn Art Hall, Palais du Tau in Reims (France), and the SpazioA Gallery in Italy. In 2007, Gudaitis was awarded the Kumu Art Museum Prize (Tallinn) for his series ‘White Pieces’ (2007-2008).