Exhibitions

From March 29 to April 18 at Art Gallery PUTTI is going to be ESTONISHING!

Estonian contemporary jewelry artists will exhibit their artwork at the group exhibition FOGSPEAK / UDUJUTT

The dense fog reduces visibility but strengthens beauty. It warns our insecurities but opens new perspectives. Fog is volatile though tangible. It allows us to feel the ethereal un gives us space to breath. Gray-toned verticals and foggy conversations will be created by a group of contemporary jewellery artists from Estonia at Art gallery PUTTI.

ESTONISHING!: 13 Estonian artists with a collective national identity background, folk traditions and history, yet they all are so distinct from one another – each with their own individual identity and character. They are like a metaphor that unifies discrete individualists, each with his or her own signature style. The only true thing that unites them is their desire to unlock their own imaginative world using jewellery as the key.

Tanel Veenre: ‘Our artisan culture is rooted in the forest. It sounds simple, but it is exactly in this feature that there is magic. The archaic yet clean wooden style is at the base of all abstraction. There is no need for noise here; whispers are loud enough.’ Estonian is the only language in the world in which the word for jewellery and sincerity is one and the same – EHE.

Thomas Cohn, a prominent Brazilian gallerist representing Galeria Thomas Cohn in San Paolo, as a bright meteor came to Tallinn to see, get to know the contemporary Estonian jewellery he had heard about. Falling in love with it, he arranged to bring it back to Brazil. Galeria Thomas Cohn premiered the ESTONISHING! jewellery exhibition at Schmuck 2016, the contemporary art jewellery event at the Munich International Skilled Trades Fair.

When asked about the title of the exhibition, Tanel Veenre, its curator, explains: ‘We had come up with several ideas, but then Thomas suggested ESTONISHING! It seemed the best fit because it was immediately clear that the participating artists came from Estonia, plus, a word written in the wrong way instinctively draws attention.’

At the core of the group are two pillars of contemporary Estonian art: Kadri Mälk, internationally renowned jewellery artist and a professor in the Jewellery Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts; and Tanel Veenre, the collective’s mouthpiece, who is also a professor in the Faculty of Design at the Estonian Academy of Arts as well as a photographer, lecturer, and member of many international exhibitions.

Each artist showing work in the exhibition is one of a kind. The artists are both united and contrasting at the same time. When looking at the jewellery that they have created, one senses that when making their pieces, these artists focus on spiritual qualities; the works on view have an introverted quality, perhaps even a touch of darkness to them – features that, just like a fixation on details, are so very characteristic of Northern peoples.

People speak about spiritual endeavors, the wish to be active outside the realm of physical reality. The ability to create noise and scraps while retaining a clear surface. The closeness of nature, the sensitivity of a fingerprint, and even if your ears are not within your field of vision, you cannot escape them.

A piece of contemporary jewellery illustrates a feeling of magic and temptation; much like a cult, nature is an intrinsic part of contemporary jewellery. It is safe to say that, having attracted the attention of the world, the jewellery artists of today’s Estonia form the foundation of the contemporary art jewellery platform. Of course, it is impossible to completely abandon form and context, yet make no mistake – an artist creates not only objects, but also the space for communication between the artwork and the person.

Exhibitions Curators:

Thomas Cohn 1934-2018;

Tanel Veenre

Supporters: Estonian Cultural Foundation

Participants: Sofia Hallik, Nils Hint, Piret Hirv, Julia Maria Künnap, Kristiina Laurits, Eve Margus-Villems, Kadri Mälk, Maarja Niinemägi, Villu Plink, Darja Popolitova, Ketli Tiitsar, Maria Valdma, Tanel Veenre.

The Hall of Fame of the SIIL Prize 2019 will be opened in Showcase gallery (at EKKM) at 5pm on April 4th, 2019.

Artist group SIIL launches the contemporary art award – SIIL Prize. First nominees for the prize are Johannes Luik and Nele Tiidelepp. Both artist are working in the field of installation and their artwork was exhibited in the new project space called Vent Space. The winner will be found out as a result of popular vote: every visitor had the opportunity to leave the name of their favourite artist in the ballot box.

The winner will be awarded the golden SIIL and crowned with the eternal glory and fame, also, his/her name will be carved into stone. The stone with the winner’s name will always commemorate the remarkable event on the wall of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia.

Johannes Luik (b. 1988) focuses on the subjective describing of impressions and spaces in his artist’s practice. His artwork acquires form in various media, however always relating to space while creating a clean whole. Luik studies the subjective experiencing of materials, places, time and memories.

Nele Tiidelepp (b. 1998) artist’s practice expresses essential nudity, self-reflection, self-irony, opposition of darkness and light both in the direct and metaphorical sense, and poetry (of space). The recurrent characteristic of her work lies in the analysis of herself as a young woman and young artist.

What if we re-designed interfaces to be tangible and beyond digital screens?

The Expo takes place in the EKA lobby, ground floor (Põhja pst 7). The exhibition opens at 10:00, welcome words, presentations and tours will be held at 18:00, and the day will be finished with DJs and party at 19:00. Snacks provided, good company available, great memories guaranteed.

Get surprised by a bench. Play a game that connects you with other people (literally). Send sweet compliments to co-workers. Go to sleep easily with the help of a nifty phone charger. Send physical compliments to a chef at a restaurant. Or, learn colors—all 110 of them.

Come, touch and experience the working prototypes of all these ideas, get inspired and meet the IxD.ma team!

IxD.ma is an international MA program in Interaction Design at the Estonian Academy of Arts (http://ixd.ma/) and this exhibition is the result of the Tangible Design project led by Ottavio Cambieri and Anna Jõgi.

Infinite Life Gallery’s first exhibition „Binding Matter” will be open from the Thursday, March 28 at 6pm at LVLup! Museum. Infinite Life Gallery is LVLup! video game museum’s side project, located in ARS Art Factory. The exhibition will remain open until April 21.

Textile artists group exhibition „Binding Matter” observes the nature and meaning of materials. Balancing on the borders of textile, design and art, the participating artists discover the connections, features and meanings between different fibers and substances. The exhibition focuses on experiments and combinations of materials, through which modern materially overloaded world is being critically rethought.

Participating artists: Ingrid Helena Pajo, Katarina Kruus, Ann Müürsepp, Frank Abner ja Triin Talts. They’ve been brought together by studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts textile and product design departments, whilst sharing a common interest in environmentally friendly and sustainable art.

Exhibition is open until April 21, at LVLup! Museum opening times:
Tue–Thu 15–20; Fri-Sat 15–22; Sun 15–18
https://www.facebook.com/lvlupmuseum/
Pärnu maantee 154, 11317

Curators: Laura Elisabeth Konsand, Ingrid Helena Pajo
LVLup! team: Patrick Zavadskis, Camille Laurelli, Sigrid Liira, Anneli Kripsaar

Thu, 28.03 – Sat, 30.03

Light and sound installations

The light and sound installations made by the students of EKA under the umbrella title “Time as Light” provide access to the lighted spaces uniting scenarios of the past and future. The students’ installations were created under the guidance of sculptor Elo Liiv. In addition to the scenic sunsets, in Noblessner one can enjoy a wonderful show of light and shadows at dawn during TMW.

Students: Silvia Ilves, Henri Kaarel Luht, Merilin Põldsam, Kati Masonry, Elis Rumma, Rebeka Vaino, Eliise Saar, Klarika Mäeots-Uustal, Mati Uust, Elisabeth Juusu, Joonas Timmi, Moonika Mällo, Johanna Põldemaa, Annika Ülejõe, Karl Kristian Kits.

There is opportunity to meet students and artists at the opening of the exhibition on March 28 at 21:00. The light installations remain open only on three nights, and on Sunday, Noblessner’s port city is all the same.

SIIL Prize nominee exhibition will be opened at Vent Space project space on Saturday, 23 March 2019 at 6 pm.

SIIL Group will award the inaugural new contemporary art award, the SIIL Prize! The first nominees are Johannes Luik and Nele Tiidelepp. The artists, who work in the medium of installation, will present their work at the new Vent Space project space. The winner will be determined based on a public vote: every visitor will have the opportunity to place the name of their favourite in a ballot box at the exhibition.

The winner will be awarded a golden hedgehog (SIIL), they will receive eternal glory and fame and their name will be carved in stone. The stone bearing the name of the winner will remain on the wall of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia to commemorate this significant event.

The exhibition will be open 24-29 March, every day 4pm-10pm. The exhibition will be ceremonially concluded with opening of stone at the Showcase Gallery (on the facade of EKKM, Põhja pst 35) on 4 April at 6 pm.

Johannes Luik (1988)describes impressions and spaces subjectively in his artistic practice. His artworks take form in different mediums and merge organically with the space. Luik tries to bring together the space and the meaning behind different topics. Recently he has been studying the subjective perception of time and memories.

Nele Tiidelepp’s(1998) artistic practice relies on notions like bareness of being, self-reflection, self-irony, the juxtaposition of darkness and light in a literal and symbolic sense, poetics (of space). Also, she analyses her identity as a young artist and a young woman.

Graphic design: Kristjan Hinno
Thanks to: Eliis Laul, EKA installation and sculpture departement, EKKM, Kristjan Hinno

Join us for the opening on Friday, March 29, at 6 PM, with a special performance by the EKA Choir at 6:15 PM.

We are all born with a knowing pain in our soul, and this innate understanding is loneliness: a deep ache for another to fill the cavity we cannot otherwise fill, sincere desperation that seamlessly moves from the emotional and psychological to the physical.  It is an agonizing progression: painful in the utter dissection of the self with each invitation and rejection, each a beautiful and grounded humiliation where we no longer even recognize ourselves as we wholly long for someone to alleviate the paralyzing fear of dying alone.

When the other, it seems, is and has always been absent, the suffocation of loneliness becomes far more than a feeling – it becomes an insanity of our own making.  We are driven mad by an endless and relentless pursuit for a chosen other with a bittersweet and intoxicating need that is simultaneously exciting and devastating, loving and heartbreaking.  And it is this longing, this intense and unforgiving emotion, that will slowly and decidedly kill us.

Erinn M. Cox is a jewellery artist from the United States, currently residing in Tallinn, Estonia.   She holds a BFA in sculpture and photography from Florida State University, an MFA in sculpture and installation from the Memphis College of Art and is currently pursuing an MA degree in Jewellery at the Estonian Academy of Arts.  Erinn is a published writer on contemporary art and design, an adjunct professor of Fine Arts and Art History, and is the founder and writer for the online journal Louise & Maurice (www.louiseandmaurice.com) 

For more about the artist, visit www.erinnmcox.com

Erinn will give a personal tour of the exhibition on Tuesday, April 16 at 5:30 pm.

On Friday, February 15 at 6 pm, Liina Siib’s exhibition “Politics of Paradise” curated by Taru Elfving will be opened in Tallinn Art Hall.

Liina Siib excavates the multiple dreams and ideals that haunt the present. Her work pays acute attention to the minor narratives, which usually persist in the shadows of the attention economy or crevices of accelerated lived experience. Bringing together new productions and a selection of older works by Siib, the exhibition Politics of Paradise mediates intergenerational conversations between individual lives and complex gendered histories of privilege and power.

Recently Siib has looked at the ongoing regional economic migration through the eyes of Estonian women working in Finland. This contemporary polyphony of personal stories, desires and realities is reflected against new installations focused on the tragic yet deviant historical local female characters. They continue Siib’s long-term artistic investigations into the entangled political and habitual claims to space, voice and meaning.

Tallinn Art Hall (Vabaduse väljak 8, Tallinn) is open from Wednesday to Sunday, 12 noon to 7 pm, admission € 3 / € 6 / € 9.

The Art Hall Foundation is a contemporary art establishment that presents exhibitions in three galleries on the central square of Tallinn – at Tallinn Art Hall and nearby at Tallinn City Gallery and the Art Hall Gallery. Tallinn Art Hall exhibitions are installed by Valge Kuup.

Carol Katkoff will open her solo exhibition “Using a Metamorphotic Photo Story as a Medium for the Analysis of the Viewer” at Vent Space project space on Wednesday,
February 6, 2019 at 6pm. 

Carol Katkoff is interested in the psychological process of perceiving
the world and how it makes everyone experience the surroundings through
their own unique distorting mirrors. The world we are experiencing is only the imagination of reality. The image
dictates the ways we perceive.

The key of the exhibition is a meta-morphotic photo story bound into an accordion book, which is accompanied by videos of the interviews with the viewers. The author created the book with an idea, that it’s story is formed depending on the viewer and one’s individual experiences and imagination. In a chaotic, but narrative photo story, the aimlessly drifting camera creates a metamorphotic plot, where the characters might or might not be linked together through only a chance. The actions of the characters might seem to have a purpose, but before we reach it, the camera might have already found a new subject of interest or brought us into an absurd situation.

The photo story is like a little replicate of the chaos we experience in real life, in which we try to find a meaning already because we have an instinctive need for it. The instinctive need is the reason why also the viewer is trying to reach an order in the chaos and find meanings in the story. The viewer is an active participant in the creative process, so that the story behind is formed by the individual experience and imagination. The complete form comes into being in a moment the viewer meets the story. The process the viewer goes through is a reflection of how the analyze should take place with the perceived information in general. The meanings the author might have actually had creating the story don’t own an importance.

The exhibition will be open daily from 12pm to 6pm until February 9, 2019.

Carol Katkoff is studying in MA Programme of Contemporary Art at Estonian Academy of Arts. The current exhibition was created as a thesis work
in Photography at Pallas University of Applied Sciences in 2018.