One and Two Women. From series "Old Feminist"

In One and Two Women, a painting created in 2008 by Gintaras Znamierowski, we see exactly the number of subjects mentioned in the title. The woman in the background appears to have come from a painting by the abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning. The other two, in the foreground, are from our time. Znamierowski ironically notes that "what is shown here is the victory of a future age, when an obsolete woman, painted by a man, recedes like the past to the background, while two female performance artists spend their time in modern fashion tearing at each other in an empty frenzy, leaving colourful artistic artefacts like bruises and scratches on their bodies."
Make no mistake, Znamierowski gets along very well with the Lithuanian feminist artistic group "CoolTūristės", but he still retains his own ironic view of their activities. He has a similar outlook on the majority of cultural processes. Znamierowski's position is one of a consumer, analyst and critic of the imagery and texts produced by contemporary culture. Seeing feminism as a vibrant part of that culture, he gives it plenty of attention, dedicating to it an entire series of works entitled Old Feminist.
The painting clearly demonstrates Znamierowski's characteristic principle of creating "painting without painting." Take a closer look at de Kooning's woman in the background. Abstract expressionism aspired to intuitive and energetic gestures and admired authorial brushwork. In his copy of one of the icons of this style, Znamierowski recrafted the gestural brush strokes as an even, thin layer, in the style of dispassionate "hyperrealism."
Since his study days at the Vilnius Art Institute in 1988, the artist has not shied away from his own complicated relationship with the tradition of expressionist painting, sometimes called the Lithuanian painting tradition, a style that achieves, in the words of the artist, perfect "spiritual oppression." Professors at the Institute, however, held that the realistic painting movement – and especially its hyperrealistic form – was second-rate. Staying true to his own individual creative style Znamierowski counters expressionism with bold statements and coherent, conceptual works – with a style one could call anti-painting, or even "surrogate" painting.