VILNIUS.- Robertas Narkus is an interdisciplinary artist whose work brings together photography, video art, performance and installations, where the logic of everyday life intertwines with subtle absurdity. He describes his practice as “the management of circumstances in the economy of chance” – emphasizing the constant tension between planning and unpredictability, structure and chaos. Through diverse media, Narkus constructs fictional, interwoven situations in which the everyday reveals itself from unexpected angles.

In the exhibition “KISS”, Robertas Narkus presents his latest works, developed during his ISCP residency in New York this autumn. While “KISS” evokes the idea of a romantic gesture, in the context of this exhibition it also refers to the engineering and design principle “Keep it simple, stupid”. Coined by aircraft engineer Kelly Johnson of the “Lockheed Martin” company, the principle encourages avoiding unnecessary complexity and choosing effective solutions. Narkus adopts this principle as a strategy for responding to the culture’s entrenched rhetoric of darkness and negativity – transforming simplicity and lightness into a critical perspective that invites the viewer to embrace imperfection as an authentic source of optimism and balance. In this exhibition, Narkus searches for alternatives to aesthetic regimes steeped in dystopian pessimism and asks: how can we resist the growing melancholy and inner emptiness that loom over contemporary society, constantly urging itself toward (self)destructive perfection?

He questions the dominant forms of optimism today, noting how they are often co-opted by advertising and the tactics of an instant economy that promote automatic consumption and performative positivity. The artist’s abstract elements burst into sterile, museum-like depictions of Louis XVI interiors, disrupting the rigid image of perfection. Yet this disruption is not an act of destruction – it is an invitation to abandon illusion and to accept imperfection, opening a path towards authentic experience.

Robertas Narkus (b. 1983) studied at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam and completed his doctoral art project “How to Get to the Venice Biennale?“ at the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2025. He participated in a collective practice research program at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. The artist’s works have been presented at the Contemporary Art Centre, the 12th Baltic Triennial, the Vilnius Performance Biennial, KIM? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga, de Appel Arts Centre, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Whitechapel Gallery in London, Ballroom Marfa in the USA, Eastcontemporary in Milan and Temnikova & Kasela Gallery in Talinn. In 2022, Narkus represented Lithuania at the 59th Venice Biennale, and in 2014 he was awarded the Young Artist Prize, marking early recognition of his work.

The exhibition “KISS” will be open until January 15 at (AV17) Gallery, located at Totorių str. 5, Vilnius, Lithuania.