Vytautas Kumža

VYTAUTAS KUMŽA (* 1992, Lithuania) visual artist based in Amsterdam.

My work exists in a universe governed by an ambiguous, fantastical logic that turns the banality of everyday life into an odity. I am interested in the heightened sensitivity we bring to objects, where ordinary things can suddenly feel tense. I apply this way of looking to the surrounding, paying close attention to the condition, placement and relationships between things. Growing up in a precarious and turbulent environment, I learned to read small details like a gas hob left burning, a frightened dog, a door left open, as signs that something might be about to happen. Today, I combine this sensitivity with an interest in composition and psychology, staging conversations between objects that remain mute but seem to activate one another. I place them in carefully constructed relationships that can appear alluring while holding an underlying tension, suggesting something sexual, potentially violent, seductive or abusive - emotions suspended, waiting for release.

Although my work is primarily rooted in photography, its content is often constructed as a sculptural installation that either extends or contradicts the spatial presentation of the images. Through visual illusions, shifts in scale, spatial constructions and unexpected relationships, I make familiar things appear uncanny and question the space between the animated and the lifeless, the real and the constructed. The installations become an unfaithful encyclopedic archive where the displayed elements leave visible marks to photographs, showing sources of inspiration as well as the processes for their production. I want to remind the viewer that they are looking not at the thing being photographed, but at a photograph in which things are given new roles and allowed to perform.

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