This year, Contour Art Gallery celebrates its tenth anniversary. However, the gallery’s story began long before it established its permanent home in Vilnius’s Old Town. For almost a decade, Contour Art Gallery was a travelling gallery, organising exhibitions in various venues, taking part in art fairs, developing projects and seeking opportunities for Lithuanian artists abroad.

Interestingly, the gallery’s founder, Vilma Mačianskaitė, had never dreamed of owning an art gallery. A degree in economics, 26 years working in the fashion industry, studies in art history, and experience in television and radio – at first glance, these might seem like quite different stages of a professional journey. Today, however, Vilma says that all the experience she has accumulated serves a single purpose: to move forward with art and artists.

There are works of art that reveal themselves immediately to the eye, and others that require time. Quentin Lefranc’s sculptures and installations belong to the latter category. Their visual language is remarkably economical: a few lines, industrial materials, plays of transparency, structures that seem almost silent. Yet behind this apparent simplicity unfolds a complex reflection on space, the body, and perception.

This conversation emerged from those questions. Rather than tracing a linear artistic biography, it follows a series of themes that have shaped Asta’s work: the formative experiences of childhood and motherhood, the recurring presence of the female figure, the gradual return to landscape, the influence of relocation and travel, and the ongoing dialogue between painting, printmaking, memory, and perception.
Having known Asta’s work for many years and now having the privilege of curating her solo exhibition, I wanted this interview to create a space in which the artist could reflect not only on what her paintings depict, but on the experiences, intuitions, and processes that continue to animate them. What emerges is the portrait of an artist for whom landscape is never merely a view, but a way of thinking, remembering, and belonging.

One sunny morning led me to Montreuil, on the outskirts of Paris. The studio, flooded with light, opened onto a calm and generous clarity – at once understated and expansive. The space seemed to breathe alongside the works, as though it naturally extended their presence. Sarah offered me a coffee. In that simple, almost everyday gesture, something of the rhythm of her life had already begun to emerge: an attentiveness to reality, to the moment, to human connection. It was there, within this atmosphere both precise and welcoming, that our exchange began – a conversation that now finds its place in writing.

The exhibition Sensitive Landscapes. Territories Seen Through the Female Gaze at Espace H2O presents a collection of paintings and an installation conceived as a poetic journey through landscape, exploring how nature reflects the inner world and the multiple layers of identity. Inspired by walks through the surroundings of Differdange and the Luxembourg countryside, memories of childhood spent by the Nemunas River in Lithuania, and travels across different parts of the world, Asta Kulikauskaitė interweaves places, impressions, and emotional memories through a subtle harmony of color and form.

We are often taught what to think about art, but rarely how to look at it. For many people, entering a museum or a gallery can feel intimidating. There is a sense that artworks require prior knowledge, historical context, or expert interpretation. As a result, visitors may move quickly from one piece to another, reading labels more than observing, searching for the “right” meaning instead of forming their own.