The starting point of ‘Father’, Mykolas Valantinas’ solo exhibition, is the archive of drawings and prints by his father, artist Rytis Valantinas, which the son transforms using artificial intelligence. The filter of new technologies brings to the surface the contradictory dynamics between father and son: a mixture of adoration and a ‘desire’ to appropriate or ‘take over’ the father’s work. The AI-generated images that interpolate the archive are exhibited alongside another essential offshoot of the father’s creative oeuvre – money.
Rytis Valantinas is the author of some of the first banknotes of independent Lithuania – the talonas and litas. He also created a 1000-litas note that never entered circulation. The exhibition presents money in a twofold manner: as a political, cultural and economic symbol – the heritage of an entire nation – and as a family relic, laden with memories and claims of inheritance. The deconstruction of the 1000-litas note into the constituent elements needed for counterfeiting becomes a creative gesture that binds together personal and mythological worlds, exposes the mechanisms of value creation, and blurs the boundaries between original and copy, reality and fiction.
Read more about the exhibition in the curatorial text written by Povilas Gumbis.
MYKOLAS VALANTINAS is an artist living and working in Vilnius. He graduated with a BA in Philosophy from Vilnius University and an MA in Photography from the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ÉCAL) in Switzerland.
His practice includes video, photography, and installation. His works have been shown in Lithuania and abroad, including the ‘Artists’ Film International 2025: Dream States’ programme curated by Forma in collaboration with 16 cultural institutions across four continents, the Radvila Palace Museum of Art in Vilnius (2024), the LNDM National Art Gallery, VDA Nida Art Colony (2023), and Platform L in Seoul (2022). Valantinas is the recipient of the ‘JCDecaux Prize 2023: Exchange for Age’ audience award.
‘Father’ is Valantinas’ first solo exhibition.
POVILAS GUMBIS is a curator and art historian working at the Sapieha Palace branch of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC). He graduated with a BA in Art History from the University of Essex and an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. He has curated solo exhibitions by Deividas Vytautas Aukščiūnas and Lin May Saeed, as well as the international film exhibition ‘Artists’ Film International 2024: Solidarity’.