Rosana Lukauskaitė
Exhibition statement of Jurgis Tarabilda exhibition “Sync”

The boundary between digital and physical reality is becoming increasingly blurred, transforming into a ductile, ever-shifting interface between signal and perception. Can we feel the fever of a streamer through a screen? Can a cold network of pixels convey the fear of a man in a war zone? Why do those three megapixels in the distance seem more significant than the four nearby? We are constantly searching for a recognisable shape, assigning faces to random lines, and imbuing jerky data with a soul.

Jurgis Tarabilda’s exhibition Sync acts as a visual allusion to this fractured perception of reality. His signs are imprecise yet concrete, like traces of touch on a screen, like hand gestures captured only as far as the technological medium allows. Black brushstrokes on a greenish canvas or white curves on a black background are not objects but remnants of a signal – recordings from a stream that was never fully captured.

These paintings engage with post-internet visuality: the way we project emotions onto digital signs, fetishise pixel structures, and connect their distances into meaningful narratives. Just as Wade Guyton’s printing errors become part of a painterly language, and Cory Arcangel’s generated images evoke nostalgia for a time we never even experienced, Tarabilda’s gestures synchronise with our everyday trajectories of data perception. Sync functions as a visual archaeology of a reality where the boundary between what has been lived and what has been generated is no longer clear. The infinity of virtuality expands the limits of visual language, allowing us not only to observe time but to manipulate it. In this context, the accidental swipe of a finger takes on the weight of an archaic symbol.

‘These are intuitive gestures created on a touchpad, based on automatic drawing techniques – drawings made in virtual space and later precisely transferred onto canvas using paint, paint strips, and a roller,’ explains the artist, emphasising that the creative process itself is an act of synchronisation between two different forms of visual existence. Here, Tarabilda not only captures the visuality of the digital interface but also deconstructs it: the fragmented mark is no longer a spontaneous brushstroke but a carefully reproduced trace of virtual movement, retaining its digital origin while acquiring material weight. This approach aligns with post-internet strategies, in which digital imprecision is transformed into material precision. It raises a central question: are these signs still gestures, or have they become algorithmic traces? Are we looking at a painting or at a digital fossil preserving the memory of virtual movement?

The process of painting here is not finite – it functions as a residue of the stream of information, a kind of visual delay, where the image repeats itself, leaving a shadow trace, caught between presence and erasure. Each element pulsates with its own rhythm, yet all belong to a common field of synchronicity. These signs resemble not only hieroglyphs or unintentional scratches on a screen but also the curves of electroencephalograms recording brain waves – impulses whose meaning depends on interpretation: like glitch aesthetics, visualised memory loss, or even a 21st-century sign language unfolding through algorithmic filters. This is painting as a signal that interrupts and resumes again – synchronising with image perception, yet never fully resolving into a stable code.

The exhibition confronts a polyphonic system of visuality, in which colours and shapes synchronise – not in pursuit of a fixed result, but as part of an ongoing process of becoming. It is a space where reality reveals itself, like the organically deformed shapes of Louise Bourgeois’s sculptures, shifting identities, branching out, and shining through time and states. Sync is a hypnotic structure that the viewer enters unconsciously, drawn into its vibrating, rhythmic, yet unpredictable harmony. It is an (un)painted expedition through the folds of time and fragments of reality – a chaotic yet precisely orchestrated score in which every sign becomes a visible sound, every gesture part of a wave of information.

Jurgis Tarabilda’s exhibition functions as a visual ecosystem in which individual canvases form a dynamic network, challenging the traditional notion of an artwork as an independent, closed whole. It is a modular system, similar to the logic of digital windows, algorithms, or layers of information, where each fragment exists both autonomously and as part of a larger whole. This provokes an effect of recognition: the viewer instinctively searches for meaning and connections between signs, yet their significance remains open-ended. The artist’s signature sense of déjà vu is interwoven with recognition errors, transforming abstract signs into remnants of a disturbed algorithm or archaeological traces of visual information. Lastly, the implied asterisk and note on the lightbox function as an additional visual glitch – like a bug in the digital interface or an artificial explanation that, rather than offering clarity, only deepens the uncertainty. 

The architectural structure of Sync is conceived as an organically evolving visual medium, where the space itself seems to be perpetually ‘loading’ – like an endless web page accumulating layers of information in real time. Designed by Černiavskaja, this transformation of space mirrors the logic of Tarabilda’s work: digital atmospheres, cloud drives, and layeredness function not only as visual metaphors but also as physical forms experienced by the viewer while navigating the gallery’s meandering layout. As embedded in the exhibition’s title, its architecture synchronises with the works, reinforcing the same idea of processuality: the space is in constant flux, shifting, transforming, and evolving, provoking a change in perception. It appears as if it has not yet fully ‘loaded,’ pulsating between completeness and an emerging structure – giving the impression that the visual material is still in the making. This architectural vision is not merely a backdrop but an integral part of the exhibition itself. Deliberately drawing from the aesthetics of the digital world, it translates impressions of information overload, layering, and synchronisation into a physical, dynamic structure, where each step evokes not only a transformation of time but also an unfolding visual code.

Enjoy the digging!

 

Translation by Alexandra Bondarev