Algirdas and Remigijus Gataveckai (b. 1985) are a Lithuanian artist duo working in painting, drawing, installation, and public art. Their work combines the tradition of academic realism with the principles of conceptual art, with important themes including social exclusion, identity, memory, and human dignity.
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The year 2026 is particularly successful for the artists: they became laureates of the “Baltic Awards” for significant contributions to art, and their work “Genealogical Deformation” was selected from 1,474 entries among 51 works presented at the “Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2026” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Currently, the duo’s drawing “You are already looking at me longer than my parents ever did” is exhibited at the Vilnius Picture Gallery exhibition “In the Beginning Was the Line. Drawings from the 18th–21st Centuries from the Collections of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art.”
The Gataveckai’s work has also been presented beyond Lithuania – in 2023, their wall painting “Independence” was implemented in the interior of the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Seoul. The artists’ works are included in the collections of the MO Museum and the Vidmantas Martikonis Gallery-Museum “Self-Portrait,” as well as in private collections in the USA, Austria, and Estonia.
The Gataveckai have a long-standing creative relationship with the “Meno niša” gallery – their debut solo exhibition “Situation” was held there in 2010, and in 2015 the exhibition “Self-Portraits-Homonyms” was presented. In the latest exhibition “Code: I am,” the artists’ perspective shifts: the focus moves from the individual, previously dominant in their work, to the institution that shapes them.
In the context of the exhibition, the institution is not associated with a single specific system. The artists perceive it more broadly – as a structure organizing human daily life, setting behavioral norms, creating mechanisms of order, and defining the individual’s place in the system. For the Gataveckai, not only the person influenced by the institution is important but also the logic of its operation itself: established rules, supervision, the relationship between the individual and the surrounding structure. Thus, the personal experience of the artists in the exhibition becomes a starting point for a broader reflection on the functioning of the institution.
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The center of the “Code: I am” exhibition is the transformation of the canvas. It is removed from the stretcher, covered with lapis lazuli blue, folded, and tightly wrapped with transparent packaging film. This is an irreversible action – the previous state of the painting becomes unreachable, and the painting itself turns into an object. The film acquires a dual meaning – usually used to protect the artwork, it simultaneously presses and restricts it. Lapis lazuli also holds a special place in the installation. Once highly valuable, it was associated with sacredness, nobility, and luxury. Today, the history of lapis lazuli is also inseparable from resource exploitation and power conflicts. The Gataveckai use the material’s ambiguity to speak about the creation and appropriation of human value.
In the exhibition, the Gataveckai avoid a one-sided evaluation of the institution. Care is inseparable from control, protection from restriction, and the granting of value from the possibility of its appropriation. The artists do not seek to resolve these contradictions. Rather, they leave them open, allowing the viewer to confront the contradictions of the institution’s functioning themselves.
The exhibition will run until October 3. The project is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture. The gallery’s sponsor is the Vilnius City Municipality.
