A Company of Many Faces

Paintings by Rūta Jusionytė

Erika Grigoravičienė

A room with a floor green as grass.  Six women and a man with a head of a hare wearing nothing but a baroque lace collar sit around a table.  They all hold only red wine goblets, but on the table are two plates – both empty and clean.  The rabbit-headed man, just a moment earlier, brought some important news, for the women look very concerned.  A blonde, an open book in her hand and ready to make a comment,  sits before the strange being.  She stares in our direction, but not directly at us, rather at her twin who is quickly approaching the table like some Florentian nymph, carrying a red apple.  Will the rabbit-man help?  To the right, a man with an elephant head and another blonde sit on the ground, her head gently resting on his huge ear.  They seem aloof from the rest of the company, but perhaps they may even be guilty of something, expelled like Adam and Eve.  Is the apple meant for them? In the back of the chamber, a fourth blonde dances with a man. A mixed trio sitting very dignified nearby wait their turn…   Further in the background, stand an orange-colored tree next to a window through which sunlight radiates, and an oval mirror.  The scene was painted quickly using bright local colors, with resolute lines by determined brush strokes on canvas. 

„Brunch“ (2019), a painting by Rūta Jusionytė, is one of numerous paintings with the dining table motif.  This Parisian multifaceted Lithuanian artist is intensively cultivating at least two art forms – sculpture and painting.  The polychrome and soft contours of terracotta sculpture are are alluded to in her painting, whereas the many smooth lines in her paintings resemble drawings.  She selects this hybridic expression when creating storylines for her chimeric figures and multi-specied companies.