Lithuanian duo PetPunk gathers together music, psychology, religion, history and the cosmos underneath their umbrella of influences. It’s a broad range for sure, and one that’s vulnerable to running up against a few incongruities – religion and psychology make for strange bedfellows after all. But Andrius Kirvela and Gediminas Šiaulys don’t shy away from the undertaking. Indeed, finding cohesiveness in contradiction is the quality of PetPunk’s work that makes it so mesmerizing.

The duo’s upbringing may have had something to do with it. Born and raised in the capital  Vilnius, Kirvela and Šiaulys’ formative years were during the clash of cultures that accompanied Lithuania’s independence from Soviet occupation in the ’90s. The subsequent influx of western capitalism made for a dizzying hybrid of cultural influences but also fertile creative ground.

“The culture coming from the West was so rich, colorful and attractive that it absolutely drowned everything local we had before that. You can imagine what was happening in our childish heads,” says Kirvela. “We got to experience two very different visual aesthetics. That’s probably why collage or mixes of different techniques, media and styles are very natural for us.”

That naturalness shows up in work such as “The Magnificent Town of Vilnius”, a promo for Culture Live, a government program to promote Vilnius as an arts and culture capital. PetPunk imbues the storybook characters with a surrealist bent highlighted by a mixed-media style that is captivating yet subtle, never feeling like a designer’s show-and-tell.

Firmly committed to an experimental aesthetic, PetPunk also harks back to its Lithuanian heritage for inspiration. There are overtly forward-moving pieces on the duo’s reel – their contribution to the collaborative films series PSST!3, “Legends of Exos” is a visual mind meld whose fluid transitions are created using digital video compression side effects. But for every one of these, there is work such as Culture Live “Let There Be Light” and the music video for Mario Basanov & Vidis “Who’s Shot the Silence”, which incorporate the geometric design and stylized animal aesthetic of Lithuanian folk art.

As artists who take contradictions for granted, PetPunk also makes a point of disregarding limitations. The pair is keen to explore a variety of media such as stop-motion, music, sculpture, industrial design, scenography and costume. Should you make the mistake of thinking their reach exceeds their grasp however, remember they have two powerful motivators: each other.

“We’re two strong, creative individuals so there’s some natural competition between us,” says Šiaulys. “It’s like a never-ending, self-moving engine: if one of us has done something great, the other must answer with something greater.” Q

> The artist on the art
“This is our interpretation of the opener for Merry Carousel, a famous kid’s animation program in post-Soviet countries.”

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