Painting and Drawing

At the same time I paint and draw.
I was born and have grown up in Abkhazia (the region of Georgia ocupied by Russia) and since my childhood, I have been painting and drawing. Because of my talent my parents enlisted me in art classes to continue my interest in painting and drawing at Art school in Zugdidi, where I studied and participated in the exhibitions.
In 2008 I was enrolled at the Tbilisi State Academy of Art and graduated faculty of architecture. During that period my art works was exhibited in ” Students best work “. Exhibition (05/2012) and ‘students work Exhibition “ (02/2012)

Presented artworks are made with mixed materials on canvas. All artworks are from the series called “The way” and made by me in 2020-2021.

Inga Noir has held 14 personal exhibitions and participated in 11 group exhibitions in Lithuania, Italy, Netherlands and Austria, and also has participated in art plain-airs in Lithuania.

These artworks were created as a part of the full project for a study of light in visual arts.
These artworks are a result of study of the ambiguity of light in painting. As a result artist combines the usual use of light in painting as an illusion together with quite unexpected use of literal light by using glowing pigments (or other techniques). In addition this combination results in pieces of art that change depending on the lighting of the room which is a third unexpected parallel when thinking about light in visual arts.
Thematically these artworks have a parallel subtext which emerges through reviving old ethnic symbolism through modern (cultural) objects (e.g. old Baltic symbols revived in neon lights), creating an intentional folk-shock as a tool to involve the viewer in polemicizing with the author and in that way to further revive the symbolism in the contemporary thinking as a result. Author says that the Baltic culture is very important to her, however nowadays it mostly remains only in our memory. Therefore she never misses a chance to remind of it through her art in different ways.

OTHER:
2020 – Membership in Lithuanian Artists Association

MAIN EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS:

2021
17th International Vilnius painting triennial (UN)DETERMINED, Vilnius Personal exhibition „The Decameron“ , Smoke Factory (Dūmų fabrikas), Vilnius

2019
Exhibition of a painting expedition “Painting the River”, Routers Art Lab, Vilnius

2018
Painting expedition “Painting the River” and exhibition in Kintai Arts artist residence, Kintai
Exhibition “The Look (Žvilgsnis)”, VDA gallery “Akademija”, Vilnius

2016
International project “In the trails of Baltic refugees”, Baltic Art Center, Visby, Gotland, Sweden

My usual artistic practice is oil painting, and it goes in three main ways:

1. Long term studio work with a specific theme.
2. Having outdoor adventures with spontaneous results.
3. Mixture of both that are mentioned above.

I like to see art as an extension of philosophy that is expressed through active actions such as creative work that also has an important emotional component to it, and which in sometimes can open some closed off information stored in the subconscious.

The classical Decameron, written in XIV c. by Giovanni Boccaccio, tells a story about 10 young people that decide to run away from the city of Florence, which is being ravaged by plague, to a distant countryside villa. They lock themselves in that villa and spend their time telling each other all kinds of stories ranging wide and far both thematically and geographically.
Unexpected, but important coincidence occurred – this interpretation of the Decameron that was finished painting in 2020 has coincided with a global coronavirus pandemic. People were forced to lock themselves between four walls and live of things that aren’t entirely real. Such life furthers one from reality even more than the XXI century usually does. This new context of the pandemic ties us with Florence that is being ravaged by the plague.
This interpretation of Boccaccio was done not directly, not by the book, instead, it was done trying to imagine a modern screen adaptation of the book.

The series is composed of 10 oil paintings on canvas, all of them are of the same dimensions 140 x 220 cm.

The paintings presented here are numbers II, IV, VI, VII and VIII of the 10 paintings.

In October 2019 she held her personal exhibition “En el barrio* (*in the neighborhood (in spanish)”, in gallery “5 Malūnai“, Vilnius. After one year, in October 2020 she held her personal exhibition “Instinct” in Vilnius Academy of Arts gallery Titanikas. 2019 she won a 10-day rest at the Nida Art Colony by participating in the Algimantas ŠvėgŽda drawing competition, in the same year won the jury prize Foundry Art Center, Putting It Together 2: The Art of Assembling, Missouri, (USA).

When asked about his works, artist talks about secession from chaotic world of information, return to tradition and meaning of a motherland in todays world. By observing his large canvases we see depicted fields, corridors, chambers, painted in almost harmonious fields of color. Even though Lukas paints mundane, well known spaces of our lifes, in a plane of canvas they become somewhat strange and alien. In some of his more colorful works we can see links to pop art, but overall impression is that his “style” owes a lot to abstract expressionism’s color field and hard edge movements – depicted motifs are heavily abstracted, often leaving silhouette or flat color only. Painted field becomes a line separating two fields of color. As the artist himself puts it – “in a painting I try to capture essence of the subject matter. In a process everything that is not necessary is discarded.”
From 2018 Lukas is constantly participating in group exhibitions of young artists in Lithuania. This year he presented his first solo exhibition in gallery “Akademija”.

This exhibition is about spaces, things and events seen in the outskirts of our home. Landscape is an inevitable unknown that we daily face. Did you noticed that when you travel between the cities of Vilnius and Kaunas there is nothing special to see unless you put a lot of effort into looking at it and thinking about it? About people living in those farmsteads and those crumbling houses? About imprints of those people that they leave in everything there is to see – those areas of land that they divide, their cattle in the fields, their rolls of hay that they have rolled, their private little woods that they’ve designed and left there standing for reasons maybe of a beauty. All these things and more are what landscape consists of. It is a simple thing but I don’t quite get it, neither as a genre of painting, nor as a thing to be thought about or looked at. This obscurity and absurdity of me trying to relate to mine surroundings brings me to my works. My inability to put in words what this relationship means to me, results in paintings that I make.

I draw paintings that reminds of felt-tip pen. I like to use a sense of humor and irony in almost all of my works. Mostly using large formats. I create situations based on real life and feelings.