Victor Paukstelis (1983), who lives and works in Vilnius - Lithuania, borrows themes, heroes, and heroines from art history for his paintings, building a symbolic and highly imaginative dialogue with famous and lesser known works from different eras.
Paukstelis is fascinated by painters such as Théodore Géricault (1791–1824)
or Édouard Manet (1832–1883) who managed to overcome the artistic canons of their time and pave the way for new movements. He is also drawn to the Hellenistic and Neoclassical sculptors who followed tradition without much regard. Paukstelis selects works from such artists as Jean Pierre Antoine Tassaert (1727–1788) of Antwerp, who searched for inspiration for Neoclassicism in ancient Greek and Roman sculptures.
The emergence of paintings, much like perception, is no longer possible today without the context of existing works. In his own work, Paukstelis appeals to the erudition of the viewer. Experiencing a sense of déjà vu, viewers are encouraged to recognize the works interpreted by Paukstelis. This is not always an easy process. Only occasionally does he guidance by including a reference to the source within the title of the new painting. As they guess at the source, viewers are treated to a visual puzzle as they scrutinize the details; together with the artist, they look at the legacy of art and music as objects of both nostalgia and hesitation.
The referenced motifs are approximate but not identical. In his painting, Paukstelis, a renowned classical pianist, draws on his experience of improvising during concerts. He uses a wide range of tools, balancing excitingly between reconstruction and deconstruction, repetition and replacement.
In his own unique way, Paukstelis restores to contemporary painting a traditional arsenal of expressive genres – historic, religious, mythological, portraiture, landscapes, and still lifes, giving each a new definition by erasing the boundaries between them. By delving into art history in his work, Paukstelis dissolves the distinction between present and past. At the same time, he creates distance between his own work and the original that inspired it.
To this end, he crosses out the reproduced motif and erases fragments of the image. Another important tool is his choice to limit himself to grey and the monochrome of black and white. The abandonment of polychromy in painting was made popular by Gerhard Richter, Luc Tymans, and Jan Vanriet, who gained a large number of younger followers. In Paukstelis’ painting, this choice was determined by the concept of his entire body of work, analyzing secondary reality, not nature.
Having rejected colorfulness, Paukstelis places more importance on the atmospheric nature of light. Bodies unveiled mercilessly or gently in the twilight acquire an almost real materiality. Light models volumes, gliding one way along the folds of soft fabric, and in another way along a body, on smooth surfaces of marble and metal.
More recently, Paukstelis not only references classical works of art, but also improvises the scenes depicted in them or creates new metaphors through the use of live models, including his brother and a distant relative. Adhering to the tradition of role portraiture, he focuses on staging movements, gestures, and expressions. The boundary between the mimetically accurate representation of a person’s exterior and their inner experiences vanishes. 
In these monumental paintings, figures are shown frontally in an empty space without specifying time or place. Abandoning the depiction of musical instruments, Paukstelis paints a model that meticulously replicates the movements characteristic of flute and trumpet playing. He focuses on what does not change during the making of music. The state of concentration in another painting with the same model is replaced by a confusion of feelings. In the portrait of a young man leaping with his arms raised, the artist reveals the full range of contradictory states: inclination, drive, inner turmoil, vulnerability. In the image of a man in a white shirt, the subject’s posture and gestures are graceful but introverted, betraying psychosomatic disorders. Having carefully painted the volumes of the man's body
and clothing, the artist has stopped depicting the face and simply replaced his head with Kazimir Malevich's black square motif.
Paukstelis' paintings do not form linear narratives, yet he always returns to several intertwining themes: love and death, nature and music. These are also influenced by the iconography of the works Paukstelis chooses to reference. Venus was revered in Roman mythology not only as the goddess of love and beauty but also as the goddess of victory. This duality of imagery adds to the underlying tension.
The theme of music and music-making, as well as the dialogue with art history, can be understood in this context not as a confrontation with the symbolism of temporality.
A member of a renowned musical dynasty, Paukstelis trained on the piano from the age of six and studied at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius in 2001–2007, at the Hamburg Academy of Music and Theatre in 2007, at the Normal School of Music of Paris in 2009–2013. He obtained a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Painting at the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2014–2020.
Since then, this dual-talented artist has dedicated himself to both art forms. In the fourteen years since graduating with a degree in painting, he has mounted twenty solo exhibitions, including one at the National M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum in Kaunas and the POUSH Art Centre in Paris.

Dr. Raminta Jurėnaitė