Ruta Butkute

Having studied at both the Vilnius Academy of Visual Arts and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and she completed her residency at Rijksakademie in 2015. Butkute has experimented with an array of mediums including installations, sculpture, dance and video. Performativity, has come to be the cornerstone of the artist’s work. Every object that she appropriates or creates, assumes a specific role in one of her installations. Whether dancing around each other or occupying the whole length of the exhibition space, the objects ask to be identified and to be separated from each other. But on closer inspection, for the most part they do not reveal their identity, rather they remain anonymous, only categorisable by their most intrinsic elements such as material, weight, mass or texture.

Butkute herself is unaware of whether it is the work itself, or her own need for interpretation, but is continually on a quest to search for meaning, as part of a deeper effort to trace the origins of these materials. Through her work, the viewer is drawn into a game of hide and seek from which a very physical, intuitive interaction is born. Despite the heavy nature of most of these materials Butkute utilises such as ceramics and plaster, there is a distinctive lightness that typifies her work. Merely by their placement, these objects become suggestive and one can imagine various other scenarios where other materials could be added or subtracted, and ultimately her installations often feel as if they have no beginning or end. This is the true strength of Butkute’s art.