Exhibitions

Sidney Lepp residency exhibition “Leave the keys outside..I know these doors, I know these windows..doors, windows..day of open doors..open doors day..window closed – door open, door closed – window open..each window is a door?”

Kanal gallery is attended by interdisciplinary artist Sidney Lepp, who started a month-long residency in the Liiva-ATE in early April. To experience the exhibition process, everyone interested will be able to meet the artist in Kanal gallery in April. The exhibition exhibits behind-the-scenes of the art field and opens to viewers how the production of the exhibition or project takes place – why and based on what are choices made; how to get the exhibition to the gallery and how the artist developes during the process.

The artist considers it to be the most important part to show an otherwise invisible fragment of the exhibition – process, preparations, production. Usually the audience is directed to consume the artist’s final work, and without context and numerous co-texts it is difficult to read it. This time, the window is opened right in the middle of the creative process. It is possible to see how ideas and nuances that influence the result arise. By becoming part of the process, it is possible to interact with the work of the gallery as well as the activities of the artist.

The exhibition focuses on the artist’s ideas, discussions, activities of installers and the gallerist, and their interpersonal dynamics. The exhibition exhibits opinions that influence the process. The project gives the participants the opportunity to see the exhibition in the special stages of its emergence, becoming aware of a possible lack of motivation or, on the other hand, a creative outbreak. In any case, the situation may be interfered with if desired. The aim is to show sincerely and honestly how much work, failures and successes accompany the production of one exhibition.

The documentation of the two-month process contains topics that have proved to be current in society during this period, later serving as a time capsule as a reminder of this moment.

The idea is inspired by William Grieve’s cult (documentary) film series “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm 1-3.”

Visual introduction to the exhibition.

Sidney Lepp (1994) is a fluidum that adapts very quickly to the (art) scene. Most of the time, he handles the space in an installation and grafts onto the works such features as to be as interactive as possible. Sidney is a graduate of the EAA in fine arts with a BA and a MA in contemporary art. His current playing field has been Tallinn, Riga, Berlin, Kiev and Brussels.

http://sidneylepp.com/

8.04 Kunstiministeerium

https://cca.ee/ajakiri/mida-motlevad-noored-kunstnikud

The exhibition will be open until 3 June 2023.

Graphic design: Henri Kutsar

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Võru linn

Kanal gallery

Liiva 11a, Võru, 65609

Mon-Fri 12-17 Sat 12-15

FB: Kanal galerii

IG: Kanal galerii

Additional information:

Mari Škerin / gallerist

mariskerin@gmail.com

+372 53449447

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Vaim Sarv Live Performance @ Entropy Gauntlet (EKA Gallery) on Friday, April 14, 7 pm.

As part of the programming for the Entropy Gauntlet group exhibition, performance artist and experimental musician Vaim Sarv (EE/USA) will be playing free, using voice and electronics to respond to the exhibition themes revolving around the porousness of post-western notions of national identity and it’s haunted histories.

Free admission!

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Artists:
Gabrielė Adomaitytė (Lithuania/Netherlands, 1994); Māris Ārgalis (Latvia, 1954–2008); Milla Aska (Finland, 1993); Marikki Hakola (Finland, 1960); Madlen Hirtentreu (Estonia, 1993); Elvyra Kairiūkštytė (Lithuania, 1950–2006); Miska Kukkohovi (Finland, 2001); Daria Melnikova (Latvia, 1984); Rait Prääts (Estonia, 1952); Anna Škodenko (Estonia, 1986); Viktor Timofeev (Latvia/US, 1984); Justinas Vilutis (Lithuania/France, 1991)

Co-authors:
Anders Kreuger (Sweden/Finland, 1965); Jaakko Pallasvuo (Finland, 1987); Miša Skalskis (Lithuania/Finland, 1994)

Kunsthalle Kohta, Helsinki

Opening 12.04, 6pm

“For some reason they thought this exhibition should be titled Amber. Amber could be a natural resource, a souvenir, a wall colour, or a way to accidentally preserve mosquitos full of dinosaur blood, making Jurassic Park possible. 

They are imagining this curator. Her name is Amber. She is on a Baltic-Nordic tour, taking the long trip from LA to Vilnius, making her way through Riga, Tallinn and Helsinki to look for inspiration. Afterwards – Ibiza, for fun and romance.

Maybe Amber is from a tiny spa town with an air of mystery. Shallow Springs, Wyoming. Shallow Springs, Arizona. She has left town, she has made it in the art world, but what happened in Shallow Springs is haunting her dreams.

On her way across the Baltic-Nordic zone Amber sees what other curators were not able to see. This survey of the region is not giving her the typical post-Soviet archive, austere-but-cozy Lutheran interiors, mystified relationships to lichen or strained X-is-the-new-Berlin coolness.

Amber is having a great time. These sites appear lavish and bewitching to her. Maybe it is her presence that makes them so. She is dancing. People think too much, she tells herself. Her new Baltic friends offer her a super-slim cigarette. Is it a Vogue? she asks. No, a Glamour, her friend responds.”

Info

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Participants:
Marie Kanger,Marion Laev,Agnes Isabelle Veevo,Gréta
Þorkelsdóttir,Paula,Xingpei Shen

Tutor:
Zane Shumeiko

Time:
05.04.-14.04.2023
09:00-20:00

Graphic design:
Gréta Þorkelsdóttir

The exhibition Stitch-Sensory-Story displays student work created during the Experimental free-motion machine and hand embroidery course, offered by the Textile Design department in spring 2023.

The course explored the techniques and processes of experimental stitching on various materials and surfaces using free-motion machine and hand stitching techniques.

It investigated the participants’ sensory experiences (tactility, visual, auditive, smell and others) during the making process and after. Each student produced their own personal stitched (memory, emotion, physical, sensory) story.

Each work is accompanied by the students’ written text about their
experience.

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Entropy Gauntlet
Zody Burke, Taylor “Tex” Tehan, Joonas Timmi, Lauri Raus April 6 – April 28, 2023
Opening: April 6, 6pm–9pm

“There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room … Suddenly the TV reveals itself for what it really is: a video of another world, ultimately addressed to no one at all, delivering its images indifferently, indifferent to its own messages. You can easily imagine it still functioning after humanity has disappeared.”

— Jean Baudrillard, America

Entropy Gauntlet invites you to pass a threshold into a transmutation of space. Inspired by wide-eyed summer night visits to amusement parks and roadside motels, laden with the nostalgia of childhood & playing with the expectations generated by the psychogeography of such spaces, the exhibition leads viewers to contemplate the tension between fantasies of the world we’ve inherited versus the reality of a warming planet.

Solastalgia, a concept which describes a form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change, presents itself materially through an amalgam of works and artifacts set inside a narrative. Within the Entropy Gauntlet is a contemporary apologue; using architecture as archetype, exploring the porousness of post-western notions of national identity and its haunted histories. Here, utopia and dystopia become uneven categories in the realm of the anthropocene.

In the tradition of transformative environmental-architectural works such as Gregor Schneider’s “Totes Haus u r” and Jonah Freeman’s “Hello Meth Lab in the Sun”, and hearkening to Robert Ashley’s operatic compositions of late capitalist melancholia, the Entropy Gauntlet manifests as a linear series of archaeological sites undergoing perpetual excavation. It is a narrative of motion and placelessness tropifying the notion that invisible, emotional environs can be injected into the visible sphere to create a sense of longing, dread, and even abject horror.

A note from the artists…

The roadside motel is a ubiquitous feature upon the sprawling face of the continental USA, but it is entirely absent in Estonia. It is taken for granted as a place where small tragedies may or may not occur. It is a location for repressed emotions to manifest due to its invisible status, despite its ubiquity in the flyover states. Within the Entropy Gauntlet, our aim is to engage with the surreality that permeates the line where memory and history interact, in an unexpected location in Tallinn; creating a hauntological simulacrum of a space that exists between destinations. The poetic transmutations of culture that occur when countries on opposite sides of the globe mirror and refract one another are acutely fertile terrain for our work.

The fact that the USA exists partially as a fantasy informed by media is intrinsic to our concept. Two out of four of us are American; despite this, the two of us have experienced our home country in ways that run contradictory to the America that exists in the imagination of the cultural status quo. The other two of us are Estonian and have spent a considerable amount of time formulating fantasies about America & weighing these fantasies against facts. To honestly engage with the USA is to deal with omnipresent shadows that resist truth & dominate the country’s emotional cartography, and with an endless deluge of popular fantasies that provide alternative images to the USA that exists.

Artist Bios:

With an eye towards the complicated nature of inherent and enforced structures, American multidisciplinary artist Zody Burke criticizes the absurdity of late capitalism and the mythologies and archetypes it generates, while leaving a liminal space for larger ways of being together.
Working with sculpture, illustration, sound, and other media, Burke has sought to establish that societal concepts of identity, symbolism, brutality and hierarchy are as tenuous as we see to craft them, and yet they paradoxically shape practically every facet of our lives.

Taylor “Tex” Tehan is an M.A. Graphic Design student from the United States and an interdisciplinary practitioner. Working with textiles, sound, metal, wood and film, his work is influenced by the landscape, nostalgia, speculative futures, mythology and romanticism of the American West. Previously working in the fashion industry, Tehan has worked as a designer for various brands, including a recent traineeship on the Menswear Design Team at Louis Vuitton in Paris. His interests meet at the cross section of fashion, music, contemporary art, film and graphic design, with a strong emphasis on experiential-environmental themes.

Joonas Timmi is an Estonian artist & designer who explores the contemporary identity of craftsmanship by combining traditional woodworking techniques with VR-modeling, 3D-printing and CNC-milling. In his work, he expresses the relations between functionality and sentimentality in objects using furniture as the main medium. Each piece aims to be a somewhat functional artifact with an emphasis on biomorphic form with anthropomorphic charisma. A recent work, “Traction” chair, was exhibited in the exhibition “Present Yet-to-Be” (Tallinn, Hobusepea gallery) in January 2022. The installation combined meandering forms of plywood with textile to create throne-like structure, inspired by the idea of alternate realities.

Lauri Raus is an Estonian songwriter & guitarist, most notable for his work in contemporary country/shoegaze ensemble Holy Motors. Through his work, he engages with western musical tropes from a distance, transfiguring his own interpretation of Americana into something subtly different and altogether unique. His band is signed to New York-based indie label Wharf Cat which has enabled him to tour the USA, allowing him to rupture, expand, and transform his relationship with the musical tradition he uses as a foundation for his art. He studies anthropology at Tallinn University.

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On April 1, the EKA Pop-Up Shop selling modern design and new art will open on the shopping street of Telliskivi Creative City, 

The original designs and works of art of the students of the Estonian Academy of Arts on sale in the EKA Pop-Up Shop.

More than forty students bring out their best, latest, most sustainable design and art. Among the many EKA artists, the pop-up shop also features the works of already recognized authors. Among others, fashion student Cärol Ott, laureate of the 2021 Wiiralt scholarship, ceramicist and jewelry artist Elize Hiiop, accessory designer Sandra Luks, performance artist and Master’s student in EKA ceramics, and Keithy Kuuspu will present their creations in the store.

During April workshops and master classes for city residents, tourists, people from abroad will be held. One can find creations varying from graphics, drawings, paintings and photographs to clothing design, accessories, jewellery, ceramics and blacksmithing.

Designs and art works by the following authors will be present:

Markus Vernik
Kaisa Uik
Oliver Udeküll
Keithy Kuuspu
Helen Griffiths
Visa Eino
Triin Türnpuu
Sergei Saprykin
Evridiki Papaiakovou
Daria Dementeva
Kaileen Palmsaar
Natalia Mirzoian
Alp Eren Özalp
Helena Pass
Helen Tiits
Mirjam Aun
Riina Lii Parve
Elisa Margot Winters
Sirje Järv
Mia Felic
Anna Ovtšinnikova
Piibe Tomp
Erle Nemvalts
Cristopher Siniväli
Maria Elise Remme
Valeria Poljakova
Cärol Ott
Anu Kadri Uustalu
Samuel Eff Markkus Savimägi
Elize Hiiop
Villu Mustkivi
Liis Tisler
Zoe Koerbunner
Rita Volkov
Sandra Luks
Heli Haav
Rita Lenore
Valdek Laur
Gontsugova
Morris Motel
Elis Liivo
Kärt Heinvere

The EKA Pop-Up Shop opens on April 1 at 11:00 a.m. and will remain open until the end of the month. 

Opening hours: Mon–Fri 11–19 and Sat, Sun 11–17

Follow the information on the EKA Pop-Up Shop Facebook page

www.artun.ee; EKA üld FB; EKA Pop-Up Poe FB

Info: 

Piibe Tomp

piibe.tomp@artun.ee

Tel 5241780 

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Tõnis Jürgens „Dreaming of Babylon“ / „Paabeli ulmad“

Tartu Kunstimuuseum / Tartu Art Museum

18.03.2023–14.05.2023

The main focus of the exhibition is the digital measurement of sleep, which has gained popularity in recent years. Tracking the habits of one’s everyday life is offered to individual users by an increasing number of devices: smartwatches, -bands, -rings, -speakers, -mats, apps etc. These devices track users even when they are sleeping, collecting a steady stream of data about their habits and cycles of sleep.

The measuring of sleep turns a welcome spotlight on the importance of healthy sleep habits. However, the data collected through these measurements are resources and commodities which end up in the data centres of the smart device manufacturers and which can then be resold as data or market information. Therefore, by tracking your sleep habits and interpreting the collected data, you are also working while you are sleeping.

It seems that sleep, which previously seemed to be the last mysterious safe haven where capitalism couldn’t reach, has quietly started becoming part of the machinations of the surveillance society. Through measuring sleep, dreams have turned into side-products in the production process, like the noise surrounding a radio signal or the sediment in a bottle of juice.

At the exhibition Dreaming of Babylon, Tõnis Jürgens follows the afterlives of the data collected by the surveillance society, as well as dreams that have been written down by dreamers. At the centre of the display is a staged bedroom filled with traces of somebody’s life. In the room, a film is projected – scenes of server racks towering over uninhabited landscapes – which is accompanied by a shifting narrative of the descriptions of dreams.

The exhibition is part of the Tartu Art Museum exhibition series Young Tartu.

Tõnis Jürgens (b 1989) is a film projectionist, a writer and an emptiness aficionado. He has a bachelor’s degree in culture studies from Tallinn University and a master’s degree from the Department of New Media at the Estonian Academy of Arts, including an additional year as an exchange student at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM). The exhibition is a continuation of Jürgens’s creative research at the Doctoral School of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

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An evening with noise music, nostalgic irony and cake.

Nele Tiidelepp’s play “When we reached the end of the sentence, we forgot where it started” is performed again.

A fluid collective consisting mainly of performers, artists, musicians and art workers with a background in EKA, Riin Maide, Gregor Kulla, Henri Särekanno, Ekke Janisk, Andreas Kübar, Ats Kruusing, Oliver Issak, Raul Markus Vaiksoo and Leon Allik, are Tiidelepp’s companions on this journey to the end of the sentence, where the predominant activity is the attempt to forget the past and the predominant mood is anxiety, chaos, alienation and sincerity due to its impossibility.

Director: Nele Tiidelepp

Performers: Nele Tiidelepp, Riin Maide, Henri Särekanno, Gregor Kulla, Ats Kruusing, Andreas Kübar, Ekke Janisk

Artist: Riin Maide

Dramaturgical support: Oliver Issak

Illuminator: Leon Allik

Choreography: Raul Markus Vaiksoo

Project manager: Kaie Küünal

Co-production: Kanuti Gildi SAAL, Nele Tiidelepp

Support: the Cultural Endowment of Estonia 

The performances will take place on March 29, 30 and April 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Nele Tiidelepp’s play “When we reached the end of the sentence, we forgot where it started”.

The number of places is limited – grab your ticket now!

The first thought I had when I walked into the hall was that I felt like I was walking into someone else’s class night. It’s a certain pseudo-nostalgic feeling associated with the experience of a class night. An experience that has been somewhere before and you long for it. – Karin Allik, Kultuur ERR

Some scenes also seemed almost like a quote from something earlier and more distant, as if the performers, despite the prism of irony, were nostalgic for some distant, indirectly experienced times, when neon was in fashion and Janika Sillamaa sang about hope in a bright voice – Brigitta Davidjants, Sirp

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Come and visit the exhibition Introduction to Estonian Design! Perhaps you can recognize some familiar objects? Tell us more about it!

The Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (ETDM) invites you to contribute to the upcoming installation featuring visitors’ photographs and stories of design objects that can be found at homes and in the museum! Other objects that relate to the exhibition are also welcome.

Public programme and installation Do you have this at home? explores the wider context of design objects. We aim to raise awareness on local histories and form a more personal connection with the surrounding material culture. By showcasing how household items can become museum objects over time, the installation supports the further understanding of the museum’s collection and seeks to facilitate a conversation where varying voices can be heard.

Show us what you have:

1. Look around your home! Find out if there is/are some design object(s)
2. Take a picture of it
3. Think of any personal memories related to this object – traditions, rituals, how it became yours, anything nostalgic or very pragmatic. You can also consult and gather stories from your friends and family. Write down the story
4. Send us the photo and story via email to publik@etdm.ee or bring it to the museum reception at Lai 17, Tallinn

Selected contributions will be included in an installation in the permanent exhibition.

The public programme and installation is created in collaboration between the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (ETDM) and the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA), The Institute of Art History and Visual Culture.

Do you have this at home? is envisioned by students Ksenia Kovalenko, Maivi Kärginen-Kivi, Lilla Lukács, Paula Oberndorfer, and Johanna-Elisabeth Tärno.

Special thanks to Agnes Aljas, Rebecca Duclos, Hanna-Liis Kont, and Sandra Nuut.

Graphic design by Ott Kagovere

Exhibition design by Ulla Alla

The Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (ETDM) has been collecting and contextualizing design for the past twenty years. There are about 18 000 pieces in the museum’s collection, which are the base to organize exhibitions, public and educational programmes.

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