Game: This is Not Just Another Abstract Painting
Think about all the abstract paintings you've seen - hundreds, maybe thousands of them. White canvases, childlike scribbles incorporated into fine art, you name it. But have you ever wondered why some works leave a lasting impression while others fade from memory? What makes certain painters stand the test of time while others vanish into obscurity? Sure, we can appreciate the early abstractionists' groundbreaking courage and innovation, but what makes some contemporary artists working in abstraction still worthy of our attention in the 21st century?
Let me introduce you to an intriguing piece - "Game" (2009) by Lithuanian artist Vigintas Stankus (1962-2018). At first glance, you might dismiss it as deceptively simple: just a dark grey tic-tac-toe grid floating on a white canvas (150 x 120 cm). But there's more here than meets the eye. What makes this particular work so compelling? It may be how this seemingly elementary image taps into something universal - speaking to us about choice, life's inherent rules, and how the simplest things often carry the most complexity.
What's fascinating is the timing of this work. While his contemporaries were chasing shock value and visual fireworks, Stankus chose the path of harmony. It's quite a paradox. In a world of shouting, his whisper somehow manages to be the loudest voice in the room.
To understand Stankus's achievement, we must look at three Western art giants - Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, and Robert Ryman. Each pushed the boundaries of traditional painting in their way. In the 1960s, Fontana slashed his canvases to reveal the space beyond. Burri transformed his materials until his paintings became almost sculptural. Ryman spent six decades, from 1955 to 2015, exploring the possibilities of white paint, constantly asking: "What makes a painting a painting? How little does it take to create something meaningful?"
This is where Stankus enters the conversation. Creating "Game" in 2009, he built upon these explorations but took them differently. Instead of Fontana's violent cuts, Stankus's grey lines create similar spatial effects through gentle means. Rather than Burri's dramatic material transformations, his subtle surface modulations achieve depth through restraint. While Ryman is obsessed with the properties of white paint, Stankus lets his white space breathe naturally around the grid. Where Ryman asked, "How little is needed?" Stankus seems to ask, "How much meaning can simplicity hold?" While his predecessors sought freedom through destruction, Stankus finds it through construction - showing us that sometimes less really is more.
This approach recalls an ancient Eastern principle: the most potent action can be non-action. Western artists often had to destroy, break, burn, and obsessively repeat to find new forms of expression. Drawing from Eastern philosophy, Stankus achieves similar depth through simplicity and silence.
Here's another fascinating paradox - despite working decades after Fontana, Burri, and Ryman, Stankus's "Game" feels anything but derivative. Instead, it reads as a fresh voice in the conversation, reminding us that innovation doesn't always mean shouting louder than everyone else - sometimes, it means finding your inner quiet. This resonates particularly today, when we've grown skeptical of modernism's grand narratives but aren't satisfied with postmodern cynicism. We oscillate between earnestness and irony, seriousness and play, tradition and innovation - what theorists call Metamodernism.
This is where "Game" reveals another layer of brilliance. It manages to be deeply serious in its search for meaning (like a modernist) while using something as playful as tic-tac-toe as its vehicle. It bridges high art and child's play, Eastern philosophy and everyday life, deep meditation and playful engagement. Isn't this precisely the kind of both/and thinking (rather than either/or) that defines our current times?
Rather than creating another "serious" abstraction or sliding into postmodern irony, Stankus invites us into a space where wisdom and light coexist. This may be why the work feels so relevant today, when we're all trying to find ways to be profound without being ponderous, to engage with serious ideas without losing our sense of play.
Consider the tic-tac-toe grid itself. Everyone knows this game, but did you know it contains 255,168 possible unique game sequences? Yet any experienced player knows that perfect play always leads to a draw. Isn't that a perfect metaphor for life itself? Sometimes, specific outcomes are predetermined no matter how many possibilities exist.
Stankus's genius lies in his unique synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophies. As both an artist and a karate master, he understood that perfection comes not through complexity but through the mastery of simplicity. Just as a martial artist must repeat a movement countless time until it becomes effortless, Stankus's white background isn't just white - it's alive, dynamic, and different with each viewing.
His approach to creating was equally mindful. Before painting, Stankus meditated, achieving what martial artists call "mushin" or "no-mind," a perfect harmony between body and mind. This explains the paradoxical precision and vitality of his lines.
Isn't it remarkable how a simple tic-tac-toe grid can contain such multitudes? It tells the story of an artist who lived as he painted - with intention, simplicity, and depth.
In our age of information overload and visual chaos, this painting asks us essential questions: Do we need all this excess? Might less actually be more? Could true wisdom lie not in complexity but in finding the essential?
Or, looking at this painting, we're looking at ourselves - our choices, our games with fate, our search for meaning in chaos. That's why this work resonates so deeply - we find Stankus's story and our own in it.
Since Stankus died in 2018, interest in his work has only grown. His entire body of work is a quiet protest against chaos - not through aggression, but through a gentle invitation to contemplation. He's become a north star for younger artists, demonstrating that you don't have to choose between tradition and innovation - you can forge a path that embraces both.
The most enduring artworks share this ability to be both timeless and timely, universal and deeply personal. Stankus shows us how an artist working from authentic experience and meditative understanding can create something that transcends cultural and temporal boundaries. These are the works that truly "work" – the ones that endure in our oversaturated art historical landscape.
