_Graphic artist Laura Guokė (born in 1986, in Kaunas) residing and creating in Šiauliai does not have intention to maintain and to foster purity of the graphic art in her pieces of art. L. Guokė is one of the most active and progressive artists of Šiauliai city and also a member (lecturer) of the Department of Art in the Faculty of Arts at Šiauliai University. The artist has taken part in many national and international projects; moreover she successfully represented Lithuania in foreign exhibitions, biennales and triennials as well as received a great number of awards and appreciations of a similar type.

L. Guokė does not raise any questions as to purity of the graphic art. On the contrary, she has always attempted to find another form of the graphic art, which has neither been experienced, imagined, unspoken nor unrevealed. I tend to name the abundantly developed and strongly substantiated artistic language of L. Guokė by some specific transposing name more related not to technique but to a figurative object. Such transposition opens and bursts forth in the wide-format cycle of the pieces of art completed by mixed technique and unified by one name, Presentiment..

In the context of the visual artistic language L. Guokė experiments and manipulates possibilities of depiction of various bodily forms in a rather brave way. Here, masculine and feminine body, taking apart and new combinations of its (bodily) pieces turns into the principal object of admiration and delight. Thought and fantasy of a spectator are particularly tickled by such fragments of the pieces of art which already cannot remind (fully or partly) of the specific bodily beauty. In the forms of arms, waist, breast and other parts of the body an oposite play is flourishing, namely not specific, structural, stable but indistinct and of colouring nuanses. Namely, this particular play predetermines the impression of the body being as something (sort of imponderable). It seems that the unseen, emhemeral cosmos is expanding in between the hands (or other bodily gestures). It seems that the momentarily expressed/ opened bodily transformation turns into a new system which surrenders to spatial laws. Thus, it is possible to assert that the power of non-coverage and free interpretation opens here. 

The pieces of art by L. Guokė are recognized as some sign having interjected not only in the local space of a specific city but in the space of whole Lithuania.  The bodily topic having been developed in the nowadays cultural discourse becomes particularly relevant. I suppose that the secret related to the spacial directive expanding in between the body and / or bodily parts is returned into the anonymous bodily context as some specific possibility of idealization of the body as such.

Reduction of biological differences of the body and transformation of the body into something else (alien body) opens the context of transhumanism. Today’s movement of transhumanism freely developed by the global intellectuals postulates universal desire to expand human psychical and physical abilities. Obviously, one could only imply and fantasize about the union between transhumanism and pieces of art by L.Guokė in this review. However, it is possible to imply that in her pieces of art of wide-format, performed by mixed technique L. Guokė carries out not only the visualisation of expansion but also opens some certain, intuitive union with the visualized travelling by cinema genius Stanley Kubrick into his own, more transhuman, body. This travelling has been realised in the movie of 1968, 2001: A Space Odissey.

L. Guokė, the same as S. Kubrick, transfers the body itself into the cosmos as well as contracts the cosmos into the body.  I suppose that this paradoxical talk of mine is encouraged by the proactive artistic language of the artist herself which does not really wishes to surrender the wordy power. The language of the artist is actually not really keen on remaining but more strives not to be a hostage of the logo. Despite that, the word comes back and becomes topical in this analysis since the artist combines various, technological and aesthetic knowledge in a qualitative and inventive manner. I suppose that excellent mastership of the drawing allows not only to compete with other drawing experts but also to change the drawing itself into a new speaking manner which is characteristic to the artist herself. Once, the artist told me that a drawing is her weakness; a drawing is the object of her creative desire (non literal quotation – remark by R.V.).

I believe that I would not make a mistake saying that the pieces of art by this artist depict the abundantly visualised invisible human existence, bodily sexuality is deconstructed and the body itself is placed into spaceless (quasi cosmic) systems existing beyond the body. Here, the depth of literariness and the opportunities of phylosophical thought are opened  in the results of the artistic speech. Every spectator individually meeting with a piece of art should read the philosophy and perceive the narrative. The art by L. Guokė truly speaks about the beauty rendered by the bodily gestures. Gestures of the bodily parts impress as the perception and mastery of a distinctive, individual phenomenon and the composition of perception in the specific area of the plane. 

I should state that the spectators while looking at the pieces of art by L. Guokė very often give prominence to distinctive technologies and raise a rhetorical question (how was it created?). However, the creative task of the artist is transferred into the active field of contemplation of philosophic problems. In this case, I could only say that I am pleased that the most important for for L.Guokė is to ask a riddle and to design a peculiar, immersive-like adventure. Immersion in works by theoreticians is reflected as ephemeral space or substance which is able to immerse a spectator psychologically. In the event of L. Guokė it is possible to state that a spectator is immersed not by any object or phenomenon but by the visualised process. This process may be both instant and expanded in time and space. In the course of it, the bodily parts become the part of cosmos or the cosmos itself. Thus, the depiction of the process in a static piece of art is indeed what raise the immersive wonder, what makes to stop in front of the piece of art and to resolve different segments by thoughts into hardly-defined elements.

One should not deny the power of immersion which comes from the graphic design elements and the picture-like image union. I have seen several pieces of art in which the artist perfectly unites the bodily fragments, cosmic allusions and rather designer-like, poster-type in this case, norms of depiction into the single totality.  Therefore, the artist not solely synthesizes philosophic and literary layers in her piece (-es) of art but also unites some specific technological knowledge into the single totality. Interdisciplinary aspect is indeed (or should be perceived as) the attractiveness, originality and fashion of the artistic language of L.Guokė. Although the artistic language is intuitive by itself, a spectator experiences even more bizarre situation when anticipation becomes the object of artistic talk. Therefore, we (spectators) encounter intuitive talk about an intuitive phenomenon. Perhaps that is the reason why I tend to assert that artwork itself is rather an individual and a spectator-desorienting act.

By Remigijus Venckus