To me, a drawing is like language. A language written on paper or canvas . . . that can be clear, not very clear, or totally incomprehensible. That’s why I like to ask people: can they can read my pictures? What can they learn from them? Algirdas Gataveckas

It is impossible to speak about Algirdas’s work separately from that of his brother Remigijus. They are identical twins, as widely known on the visual arts scene as they are on the breakdancing stage. They create most of their works following the principle of collaboration combined with friendly competition. And that has been the case from their difficult childhood in an alcoholic home and later in a state orphanage in the Lithuanian town of Alytus. They can talk about their childhood for hours and hours, and with smiles on their faces. Their institutional home and the experiences they took from it became an important source of creative energy for the Gataveckas brothers and marked the beginning of their success story.

These two young artists are recognized as the best artists doing academic drawing in Lithuania today. While the brothers were still studying fresco and mosaic art at Vilnius Art Academy, their highly detailed large-scale studio works drew attention and their 2010 exhibition Situacija (Situation) was a strong debut. Combining their talent in drawing and their experience in street art (the artists expressed themselves though socially-oriented street art and graffiti from adolescence, and encourage street subcultures), the Gataveckas brothers presented a complex artistic installation to tell their family history and raise a difficult question: what happens to abandoned youth? The anatomically precise portraits of the brothers and their father featured in the exhibition (the images were later transferred to the walls of an Alytus building in front of which the brothers once begged) set the stage for their subsequent careers.

In 2014, Algirdas Gataveckas presented a series of full-sized portraits titled Poveikis (Impact) consisting of images of eight Alytus State Orphanage charges. Naturally, the series was created in collaboration with Remigijus. The project involved specific youth who were preparing to leave the orphanage and begin independent lives. Algirdas spent four years working in very familiar territory, drawing the children and completing a type of mission:

The children observed my diligence and how my work process required concentration and professional skill. I was trying to add an ethical dimension to the process. I wanted the example of my hard work to inspire the children of the orphanage to pursue creative work themselves – to help reveal their own creative powers and allow them to see life from a new, more positive angle.

The brothers represent every fold or woollen thread in such minute detail that it is impossible to tell, with the naked eye, that all of this is achieved simply with coloured pencils. Each of the individuals looking at us from the artworks reveals a specific history and inner drama, and in images that seem to have been created by an older brother, someone familiar, rather than a stranger trying to make a social statement. The Poveikis series dissolves the boundary between the work of art and its subject. The project’s culmination was the brothers’ admirable decision to donate their earnings from the portraits to their young subjects, to give them a head start in their new lives.

Although the young people are represented on a white background, as though “torn” from their surroundings (resembling a series of portraits of market vendors by Vitas Luckus, considered the godfather of conceptual photography in Lithuania), their worn out, perpetually handed down institutional clothes, authentic expressions, and characteristic body language belie their dependence on their surroundings. For example, the red button on Brigita’s jeans is a distinct reflection of orphanage life – if a button pops off it’s replaced by a new one, and the jeans continue to be worn.

The Gataveckas brothers do not draw on intellectual theories or art-world power figures in their work. Because of their academic style, their drawings are sometimes compared to the work of the Lithuanian painter Žygimantas Augustinas or the British painter Lucien Freud. But Augustinas’s and Freud’s realism consists of a play of quotes, metaphors and references that does not have anything to do with these artists’ everyday reality. Because of their involvement with people from outside the art world in their work, the brothers are sometimes compared to Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, or Artūras Raila, whose creative practices also contain participatory elements. But the two younger artists have taken another path. The main idea driving their work is the transfer of authentic experience to the creative sphere – in other words, (auto)biography. These artists are constantly looking for a relationship with the viewer, whom they seek to affect not on an aesthetic level but, as is very rare in contemporary art, on an ethical one. While creating Poveikis, the artists became interested in American futurist and social engineer Jacque Fresco’s ideas about human nature and potential. According to Fresco, each of us is programmed to continually evolve and improve, and our fundamental nature is positive, even if our surroundings often stifle these qualities. In order to free themselves from oppressive forces, people must regain confidence in themselves and strive for beautiful, uplifting goals and harmony.

The Gataveckas brothers’ work is unique in its sense of social responsibility and its humanistic worldview. They show us how we can have a positive impact on others (and, of course, ourselves).

Jolanta Marcišauskytė-Jurašienė