Metonymy

“Vartai” gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition "Metonymy" by Dominykas Sidorovas, a Lithuanian artist of a young generation.

Metonymy [from Greek metōnymía – a change of name], a figure of speech which involves replacing one concept with another on the basis of the objects signified by those concepts being fundamentally related as part and whole, cause and effect, inside and outside, agent and result, site and event, etc.

Morse code is the metaphor that Dominykas Sidorovas usually invokes to describe his work or, more precisely, creative method. It consists of individual sounds which signify letters. These sounds form sentences, paragraphs, and finally an entire novel. Likewise, the author’s paintings are individual sounds which carry meaning.

Motif that is at the center of the artist’s work is the object. The painter traces the signs of his surrounding environment, using its basic objects, their shapes, and chromatic codes as the point of departure. He constructs the signs as well as their combinations. Through abstracted marking, Sidorovas looks for interrelations and the underlying meanings.

Motif choice is directly related to object collection. This is how a set of bed boards a few years ago and later on a foam mattress ended up in Sidorovas’ studio. When the collector nailed the foam to the wall, it turned out the material absorbed the sound heavily. The process resembled a sound recording studio. The metaphor of similar painting method eventually influenced the artist directly and completely nonmetaphorically.

Morse code-based compositions eventually appeared to the artist too noisy and oversaturated with meanings, or simply not clean and clear enough. Sound-absorbing elements purified the loud environment and only a part of the story, a part of the sound reached the listener and, in this case, the author as well. The suspended meaning and object links remain somewhere behind the foam. The image is constructed from what is left after one rejects the bustle, excess, and everything that obscures the essential form.

My guess is that in his still-lifesque paintings the artist is solving his own existence rather than problems of object representation. He is not concerned (or less concerned) with an object’s historical connotation or social issues. Through things, Dominykas Sidorovas tells himself, his trajectories, his emotional states and feelings, his occasionally somewhat tactile poetry.

Author of the text:
Marius Vabalas