Artist

RUTE MERK
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Biography / Selected Works / Exhibitions / Related News
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Rute Merk, born in 1991 in Lithuania, now lives and works in Berlin. She received her BA in Painting from Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2013 and acquired her painting diploma from Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, 2023. Exploring the essence of human condition, Merk employs academic painting tradition to simulate the glitch generated from physical representations in the mediated world and the integration of identities under the conditions of cognitive capitalism. Figures and objects are usually depicted and suspended in the center of her composition in a homogenized manner, unified and isolated against the backdrop rendered in an alienating vastness and hollowness. The intriguing smoothness of her fabricated surface imitates and re-assesses the prevailing visual aesthetics in the digital sphere, concealing brushworks, the laborious endeavor, into dehumanized perfection. Meeting both the traditional and the artificial on her canvas, Merk contours both engineered sublime and concomitant anxieties of planned obsolescence in our technology conditioned life. The boundary between work and leisure is blurred, merged, and interlaced, illuminating the networked loneliness perpetuated and embodied in the immateriality shifting between the virtual and the realistic spectrum. Her solo exhibitions include: Promises, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, 2024; Moments, beacon, Munich, 2023; XP, Tara Downs, New York, 2023; f(x), Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, 2022; Стрiлецька, WT Foundation, Kyiv, 2021; SS20, Downs & Ross, New York, 2020; and Solitaire, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, 2020. Her works have been featured in exhibitions at: Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas; National Gallery of Art, Vilnius; Kunstverein München, Munich; Margburger Kunstverein, Margburger; Rupert, Vilnius; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius. Merk’s works are in the collections of Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; M Art Foundation, Hong Kong; M Woods Museum, Beijing; MO Museum, Vilnius; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing; and X Museum, Beijing.
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Rute Merk, ​Jomanté, 2020, oil on canvas, 118 x 87 cm

Solo Exhibitions

2024    Crisp3r, Gallery Vacancy at Frieze Seoul, KR
2024    Promises, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, LT
​2023    Moments, beacon, Munich, DE
2023    XP, Tara Downs, New York, US
2022    f(x), Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, CN
2021    Стрілецька, WT Foundation, Kyiv, UA
2020    SS20, Downs & Ross, New York, US
2020    Solitaire, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, CN
2019    Sprites, Downs & Ross, New York, US
2018    Virtualacra, VENT Gallery, Vienna, AT
2018    Spirits Within, Editorial, Vilnius, LT
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Group Exhibitions
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2025    ArtScience Museum, Singapore, SG (forthcoming)
2024    Wuhan Biennale 2024, Wuhan, CN (forthcoming)
2024    A Blue-Flowering Day, Yuan Art Museum, Beijing, CN
2022    The American Friend, Downs & Ross, New York, US
2022    Women of Now: Dialogues of Memory, Place & Identity, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, US
2021    Where are the people?, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, LT
2021    Vacation, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, CN
2021    [Permission Denied], Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, CN
2021    Strained Intimacies, Hussenot, Paris, FR
2019    Inner Pockets, Editorial, Vilnius, LT
2019    Jahresgaben, Kunstverein München, Munich, DE
2019    Fakten Träumen – Dreaming Facts, Galerie Weisser Elefant, Berlin, DE
​2019    TT, Atletika Gallery, Vilnius, LT
2019    XVII a., Autarkia, Vilnius, LT
2019    L’artiste devant sa toile, Marburger Kunstverein, Marburg, DE
2018    Jahresgaben, Kunstverein München, Munich, DE
2018    Jahresausstellung, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich, DE
2018    Entangled Tales, Rupert, Vilnius, LT
2017    JCDecaux Prize, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, LT
2017    White Walkers, curated by Kaspars Groševs, Tallinas 10, Riga, LV
2017    Body and Darkness, Galerija VARTAI, Vilnius, LT
2017    Children of the New East, Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn, EE
2016    Žilvitis (Willow), Galerija VARTAI, Vilnius, LT
2016    Joy and Mirror, Galerija 427, Riga, LV
2016    Growing Insistence, Šiauliai Art Gallery, Šiauliai, LT
2015    Young Painter’s Prize, Rupert, Vilnius, LT
2014    Work-in-Progress, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, LT
2013    Young Painter’s Prize, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, LT
2013    24 Spaces – A Cacophony, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden
2012    Painting in Lithuania, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, LT
2012    Contemporary Past: Tracking a Postcard, Nida Art Colony, LT
2012    Story II – we hear same, DE KIJKDOOS, Amsterdam, NL
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Awards

2017    Winner of Audience Prize, JCDecaux Young Artists Prize, Vilnius, LT
2015    Painter’s Prize, Vilnius, LT
2013    Young Painter’s Prize, Vilnius, LT


Collections

Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, US
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, US
M Art Foundation, Hong Kong, CN
​M Woods Museum, Beijing, CN
MO Museum, Vilnius, LT
Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, CH
Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, CN
X Museum, Beijing, CN


Press

Critics’ Picks, Artforum, 2022
Rute Merk on Technologized Subjectivity, Independent, 2021
The New Humanity, SKP Magazine, 2020
Critics’ Picks, Artforum, 2020

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