2K – On Creativity & Making Art

Inquiries and artistic doubts form the conceptual foundation of the artist dialogue series “2K – On Creativity and Making Art”. The program of encounters invites audiences to examine art not merely as the final outcome of creative practice, but as an intricate process of thinking, sensing, experimenting, and interpreting the world. The conversations aim to reveal what often remains behind the visual surface of a work: the maker's personal motivations, doubts, artistic strategies, discoveries, and the crucial choices that gradually transform an initial idea into a distinctive piece.

The conversation series is part of the first international contemporary art triennial “Dialogues”, held from 23 October 2026 to 31 January 2027 at the Janina Monkutė-Marks Museum-Gallery in Kėdainiai. Dedicated to the creative legacy of artist Janina Monkutė-Marks, the town of Kėdainiai, and the museum-gallery's 25th anniversary, the triennial also integrates into the “Kėdainiai – Lithuanian Capital of Culture 2026” program.

The triennial's ethos rests on the conviction that art is not a closed activity defined solely by aesthetic traits. An artwork can serve as a crossroads for different cultures, generations, lived experiences, and worldviews. It enables not only the expression of an individual artistic stance, but also the critical rethinking of habitual perceptions, raising questions about memory, identity, history, nature, technology, and humanity's relationship with a changing society.

This perspective is embodied in the artistic journey of Janina Monkutė-Marks herself. Born in Lithuania and working in the United States, she combined diverse cultural experiences, artistic traditions, and media in her paintings, graphics, and textiles, demonstrating art’s capacity to transcend geographical and cultural boundaries. The creative legacy entrusted to Kėdainiai became the foundation for an enduring cultural dialogue, making the museum-gallery a vital venue where professional art meets the public.

Today, presenting artists from Lithuania and fourteen foreign countries, the “Dialogues” triennial continues this tradition of openness. Artworks in different media and aesthetics exist here not as isolated products, but as interacting viewpoints. Divergent creative paths become opportunities to encounter the other, turning art appreciation into an active process of interpretation and reflection.

It is precisely within this framework that “2K” finds its role. While exhibition galleries primarily foster dialogue between artwork and viewer, the conversation series expands this dynamic into a direct encounter with the artist. The audience is invited not only to view finished works, but to discover the circumstances of their emergence, hear the maker's rationale, understand the reasons behind creative choices, and engage in meaningful discussion about the role of art in the contemporary world.

The title “2K” bridges two closely related yet distinct Lithuanian terms: kūryba (creativity / ideation) and kūrimas (making / crafting). This distinction allows art to be examined from two complementary perspectives.

Creativity (kūryba) is understood as the artist's broader relationship with the world, encompassing imagination, thought, memory, emotion, cultural experience, and personal interpretation of reality. It is not confined to the materiality of a specific object or the rules of a single medium. Creativity can begin with an overlooked daily occurrence, a chance association, an unusual sight, personal experience, or a conscious effort to rethink what society takes for granted.

Making (kūrimas) is the realization of this interior and intellectual activity through concrete artistic actions. It is a continuous process of choice, experimentation, technological resolution, understanding materials, and constructing form. A painter works with color, surface, and composition; a photographer studies light, time, framing, and recorded reality; an animator constructs motion, pacing, and visual story. Yet none of these media inherently guarantees artistic value. Value emerges from the capacity to transform a chosen vehicle into a meaningful, distinctive, and resonant artistic language.

Thus, “2K” seeks to reveal not only what the artist makes, but why, how, and under what circumstances they make it. It is crucial to understand how an artistic concept is born, how it mutates during the creative process, when a technical decision turns into an aesthetic one, and when a chance accident or error opens an entirely new creative direction. Equally vital is the question of when an artist decides a work is finished, and whether its completion truly marks the end of the creative act.

The cycle features three prominent Lithuanian practitioners exploring distinct disciplines: Prof. Dr Rimantas Plungė, Assoc. Prof. Dr Tomas Mitkus, and art photographer Marija Šileikaitė-Čičirkienė. Their artistic biographies, media practices, and engagements with visual culture open up multifaceted viewpoints on artistic creation, where personal experience, cultural memory, technology, and contemporary expression converge.

Rimantas Plungė’s practice invites us to consider art as a form of personal experience and worldview inquiry. Across his painting, photography, and video art, questions of memory, identity, personal mythology, and intermedial dialogue are paramount. The encounter with Plungė will explore the creative process as a continuous motion between spontaneous impulse and conscious compositional decision, between intimate experience and public interpretation.

Tomas Mitkus’s creative and scholarly work provides an opportunity to examine art within the context of the moving image, animation, and graphic narrative. Animation uniquely demands the intricate interplay of artistic imagination, story architecture, digital tools, and often collective authorship. The conversation will examine how a static drawing becomes motion, how motion evolves into a narrative, and how a creator’s concept is transformed into a complex audiovisual work.

Marija Šileikaitė-Čičirkienė’s photography invites reflection on creativity as an act of seeing, remembering, and interpreting reality. Her work does not stop at mere documentary recording. Through camera angles, lighting, composition, and presentation methods, visible reality is reshaped to evoke new associations and meanings. The encounter will explore how decades of artistic practice alter the photographer's gaze, how an everyday fragment becomes art, and what roles time, memory, and personal connection to the environment play.

Although their practices differ, they are united by a fundamental inquiry: how human experience, thought, and imagination become an autonomous artistic reality. Juxtaposing these three stances reveals not only the distinct character of each medium, but also the universal principles of creation that endure regardless of form.

The series is moderated by art critic, media artist, and Vilnius Gediminas Technical University Arts Professor Dr Remigijus Venckus, whose creative, academic, and critical practice spans photography, video art, painting, visual culture, and technology-driven expression.

In Venckus's theoretical and artistic approach, the interaction of form, content, technology, and interpretation is fundamental. An artwork is not viewed merely as an illustration of an author's concept or the finished commodity of aesthetic labor. It is a nuanced system of signs, images, materials, and cultural references whose significance unfolds where the creator's intention meets the viewer's experience.

This perspective defines the nature of the conversation series. Rather than reciting biographical outlines or describing artworks, the encounters systematically examine the causes, processes, and consequences of creation. The artists' experiences provide the foundation for broader discussions on the relationship between art and reality, creative freedom, professional responsibility, media transitions, and the definition of artistic value.

Special attention is devoted to the viewer, who is never a passive recipient of pre-packaged meanings. In looking at art, viewers mobilize their own memory, knowledge, imagination, and personal history; thus an artwork’s meaning is never finalized solely by the maker's intention. It is continually renewed through interpretation. The dialogue with the artist enriches this process, offering an opportunity to compare the creator's intent with how the work is experienced by others.

The international contemporary art triennial “Dialogues” and the “2K” cycle are scheduled to culminate with a public lecture by Prof. Dr Remigijus Venckus entitled “Abstract Art”. This closing event extends and synthesizes the program’s core themes of creation, expression, interpretation, and audience perception, situating them within the broader continuum of art history, aesthetics, and visual culture.

Abstract art is particularly pertinent to this purpose because its emergence fundamentally redefined the relationship between the artwork and visible reality. By abandoning or transforming recognizable subjects, abstract artists granted autonomy to color, form, line, rhythm, texture, and composition. These visual elements ceased being mere instruments of representation, becoming direct conduits for artistic thought and emotional resonance.

In the lecture, abstract art will be investigated as a historical, aesthetic, and philosophical phenomenon. In examining key evolutionary movements and artistic principles, the talk will highlight how notions of the artwork, the limits of creative freedom, and the spectator's role have changed. Particular focus will be placed on how to interpret a work that lacks a recognizable narrative or subject yet functions through a complex matrix of color, form, structural relationships, and associations.

The concept of the lecture is intimately tied to Venckus's own studio practice. In his experimental photography, digital graphics, acrylic painting, and collage, visual transformation, technical experimentation, chance, and subjective interpretation play central roles. The interplay of these media allows abstraction to be addressed not merely as an isolated historical movement, but as an enduring and vital force in contemporary visual culture.

Thus, the concluding lecture serves as a conceptual bridge between the works exhibited in the triennial, the creative processes uncovered during the “2K” conversations, and the viewer’s independent interpretation. The principles articulated across the three artists' stories will gain historical and theoretical depth, illuminating why art need not mimic reality to speak meaningfully about it.

“2K – On Creativity and Making Art” is not simply a presentation of three artists’ professional portfolios. It is an endeavor to establish an open intellectual and cultural space where artist, critic, and viewer participate as equals. Each brings a distinct perspective to the table; the aim is not to arrive at a single dogmatic truth, but to listen to one another, understand varied creative positions, and critically reflect on our own engagement with art.

In this sense, the conversation cycle and its culminating lecture directly advance the ethos of the “Dialogues” triennial. While the international exhibition reveals diverse ways of seeing the world, “2K” introduces the makers and processes behind these visions, and the concluding lecture contextualizes them within art history and theory. Here, artistic creation becomes not only an object of study, but a vehicle for exploring human curiosity, doubt, experimentation, transformation, and meaning-making.

The program welcomes all who are drawn to art and culture: artists, students, educators, researchers, creative professionals, and inquisitive spectators. No prior academic background is required—only an openness to explore, question, and listen.