Category: Contemporary Art

EKA Contemporary Art MA program invites prospective students to join the Online Open House on Monday, January 30, 2023 at 18.00 EET (local Estonian time). This will be an opportunity to hear more about the program, to meet and ask questions directly from the faculty. 

The Online Open House will be hosted on Zoom, the link will be e-mailed to all registrants 2 hours before the start of the event.

Register HERE

Lara Brener’s exhibition It Brittly Joints the Other’s
16.12.2022 – 22.12.2022
12:00 – 18:00
Vernissage on 15.12, 7 p.m.

It brittly joints the other’s is a reflection on the experience of translation and the meeting of displaced identities. Brener examines selftranslation, facing the other within and the border created through the contact between hybrid and ambiguous identities. The artist also reflects on displacement, playing with subtleties of text and exploring translation as the transposition of images and spaces, identities, languages, and experiences. 

Lara Brener is an artist and educator from São Paulo, Brazil. She holds both a Bachelor and a Licentiate degree in Visual Arts from Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP) and is currently enrolled in the Master of Contemporary Art program in the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA). She participated in exhibitions in Brazil, Estonia, and Lithuania, and is also a teacher in Tallinn. In her practice, working mostly with text, printmaking, and photography, Brener builds cavernous images, dissolving narratives, with images boiling up but never being fully uncovered.

Edith Karlson (EKA Sculpture and Installation BA and Contemporary Art MA) has created the scenography for Hanna Kritten Tangsoo and Sigrid Savie’s show “COWBODY/ Oh wow, it’s you!”, which will be premiered on December 5 at Kanuti Gildi SAAL.

COWBODY/ Oh wow, it’s you! engages with shifting focus from extraordinary to the habitual. Bringing together expectations and outcomes, it smoothes into a world where intimacy is exercised from a distance and sometimes only half a sentence is just enough. Sigrid and Hanna Kritten invite the audience to witness a hotpot of dance, sculpture, music and fitness trampolines where in a form of self-defense two bodies enjoy finding the struggle, or struggle to find joy.

Two rather young women. The voice between their thin lips sounds incredibly low. Their seemingly fragile, passive bodies gasp with intensity. They do not offer services but serve. Serving paradoxes, transformations and power. They are self-regulating, self-regenerating. Concrete and figurative. In life-size. They surprise and are surprised. They whisper roars. They play with domesticated forms – crawling, skipping – making the bushes go upside down. 

A very daily routine of believing in a moment where everything will be just fine. Belief that is somehow holding everything loosely together. You are a subject to forces you cannot understand that drive you apart. You are a real person. Don’t worry. The oxygen is flowing. So now you can finally let yourself go, can’t you?

You are maybe always on my mind.

Hanna Kritten Tangsoo is a Berlin-based choreographer and lighting artist. She studied dance at Viljandi Cultural Academy 2011-2014 and graduated BA Dance, Context, Choreography Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz/ HZT Berlin 2014-2017. During her studies at HZT she started to work as a theater technician at the university and thus came into contact with lighting design. In 2021 she participated in the ETC Electronic Theater Controls Ltd Fred Foster Student Mentorship Program International branch program. Hanna Kritten is one of the co-founders of Suddenly, a performing arts collective based in Berlin. Since 2017 Hanna Kritten has been a freelance artist in both dance and lighting.

Sigrid Savi is a freelance performing artist based in Berlin and Tallinn. She graduated choreography/dance teaching at Viljandi Culture Academy 2015. She has presented her first solo work Imagine There’s a Fish (Sōltumatu Tantsu Lava) in Glasgow, Riga, Berlin, Hammerfest, Kiev, Nuremberg and Vilnius. Savi presented her second solo work Pushing Daisies (Kanuti Gildi SAAL) at the International performing arts festival SAAL Biennaal 2019. Savi has collaborated with Jon Konkol on not this pillow fight in New York (Panoply Performance Lab) and Berlin (grüntaler9) and with Edith Karlson on Let’s get lost I know the way (Sōltumatu Tantsu Lava, Tallinn Art Hall) at Tallinn Art Hall.

Choreography: Hanna Kritten Tangsoo, Sigrid Savi
Music, sound design: Markus Daßau
Scenography: Edith Karlson
Dramaturgy: Ruslan Stepanov
Lighting Design: Hanna Kritten Tangsoo
Project management: Maarja Kalmre
Technical support: Henry Kasch
Co-producing: Kanuti Gildi SAAL, Hanna Kritten Tangsoo, Sigrid Savi
Supported by: Fonds Darstellende Künste aus Mitteln der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Rahmen von NEUSTART KULTUR Germany, Cultural Endowment of Estonia
Special thanks to: Heneliis Notton

Language no problem

Premiere on December 5th 2022 at Kanuti Gildi SAAL

Performance on December 6th will be followed by an artist talk led by Kai Valtna

December brings an opportunity to experience, in an exhibition format, works produced by students in the Faculty of Fine Arts as their term projects: every day there will be a fresh crop of university students’ works on display in the gallery.

Works in contemporary art, prints, installation, sculpture and painting curricula will be on display. On each morning of the marathon, a new exhibition will be installed and in the evening the exhibit will give way to the next one. Hopefully, viewers will be able to keep up with the pace of the young artists.

SCHEDULE

1.12. Drawing, supervisors Matti Pärk, Maiu Rõõmus

2.12. Drawing, supervisor Eero Alev

3.—4.12. Scenography, supervisor Mark Raidpere

5.12. Drawing, supervisors Tõnis Saadoja

6.12. Drawing, supervisor Britta Benno

7.12. Photography, supervisors Annika Haas, Kadri Otsiver

8.12. Photography, supervisor Taavi Piibemann

9.12. Photography, supervisor Kalle Veesaar

12.12. Graphic art, supervisors Liina Siib, Eve Kask, Maria Erikson, Len Murusalu, Martinus Daane Klemet, Viktor Gurov

13.12. Graphic art, supervisors Kadi Kurema, Mark Antonius Puhkan, Aarne Mesikäpp, Maria Izabella Lehtsaar

14.12. Painting, supervisors Tõnis Saadoja, Mart Vainre

15.12. Painting, supervisors Sirja-Liisa Eelma, Mihkel Maripuu, Jaan Toomik

16.12. Painting, supervisors Sirja-Liisa Eelma, Alice Kask, Mart Vainre

17.12. Sculpture and Installation, supervisors Taavi Talve, Laura Põld

19.—22.12. Contemporary Art, supervisors Anu Vahtra, Jaan Toomik, Liina Siib, Taavi Talve, John Grzinich, Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo, Marge Monko, Taavi Piibemann, Eve Kask, Maria Erikson, Kristi Kongi, Sirja-Liisa Eelma

Kaisa Maasik’s new solo exhibition The Human Sponge in the Age of Screens is open from Thursday, November 3, 2022 at the ARS Showroom Gallery. The new project dealing with the susceptibility of children and the way kids mimic everything they see and hear, brings together video footage filmed by kids themselves. The exhibition will remain open until November 29.

Something that the gathered material has in common is its influences from mass media, the mainstream film and music industry. From the 2000’s onwards, filming equipment like video, web, digital and phone cameras became more affordable. Ever since then, kids have had a way to record different re-enactments of what they see on screens. The artist adds: “The endless creativity, sincerity and enthusiasm of children in the work is amazing, but it’s clouded by the violence in most of the scenes. When mirroring their surroundings, kids have a way of showing us what society is like in general.”

Graphic design by Nora Pelšs

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and the Estonian Artists’ Association.

3.–29.11.2022
Mon–Fri 12–18, free entry
NB! The exhibition is exceptionally open on two Saturdays: 19.11 & 26.11 at 13–16
ARS Showroom gallery
ARS Art Factory
Pärnu mnt 154
11317 Tallinn
www.arsfactory.ee

More info:
Kaisa Maasik
kaisamaasik@gmail.com
5396 2524
https://fb.me/e/9IVyk3ha4

TASE’21 and EKA (Estonian Academy of Arts) Young Artist’s Award winner Karolin Poska in Hobusepea Gallery!

TASE’21 and EKA (Estonian Academy of Arts) Young Artist’s Award winner Karolin Poska will open her solo exhibition Pressure of the Gaze in Hobusepea gallery at 18:00 on Wednesday, October 19th, 2022. Exhibition will be open until November 14, 2022.

Karolin Poska: “Do you know the feeling when someone else has fixed their gaze on you? You can simply tell that someone is controlling you, stalking you with the gaze, measuring you or trying to create a visual contact. You feel it even if it is outside the field of vision, or you may realize this from the corner of your eye.

People assure that they literally feel how the eyes of “Mona Lisa” painted by Leonardo da Vinci are following them, irrespective of the physical location of the spectator. This phenomenon – when the eyes of an artwork observe the spectator in the room – is called the Mona Lisa effect. However, researchers have found that this phenonenon won’t apply to Mona Lisa since the gaze of the painted figure has been directed too much to the right.

Creating a direct eye contact is perhaps the most frequent and powerful non-verbal signal exchanged between human beings; it is also a means of intimacy, frightening and social influence. Eye contact is such a primeval way of communication common to all animal species: predators intensely keep their eye on their prey before the moment of dashing towards it; babies become intimate with their parent through visual contact; fish turn their eyes black during an aggressive act.

The oldest found fossil’s eyes are 540 million years old, the first Homo habilis or the archaic human dates back to approximately 2 million years ago. Now I feel different when looking out of the window, knowing that I am using eyes of the precedecessors being 538 million years older than a human being.

It is easier to catch human gazes than those of other species since human eyeball has a special construction – we have more sclera (the white layer of an eye). That, in turn, makes it much easier to identify the movement of the iris of an eye that has darker colour as well as determining the direction of the gaze due to constrasty colours. Surprisingly, human eyes have the closest similarity with the ones of an octopus and a squid who both have big eyes consisting of the lens, the iris and one big vitreous body.

According to my calculations, the old town of Tallinn has 77 street cameras, so you were probably looked at already when you were on your way to the gallery. You probably did not perceive this because the surveillance cameras have less constrasty eyes and different construction. Also, the sculpture in the old town that you probably passed did not follow you with its eyes since it wears glasses and unfortunately has no sclerae. And yet, lots of people say that it is namely the eyes of an artwork that make you feel something.

While preparing for the current exhibition, I went to galleries and streets and looked at art; and also looked at others looking at art and let the artworks look at me and my act of looking. I really hope that you will find something worth looking at!”

Karolin Poska (b. 1991) is a performance artist, choreographer and dancer who lives and works in Tallinn. She has graduated from the department of dance art at the Viljandi Culture Academy of the University of Tartu. In her artistic practice, Poska tries to understand what it feels to live in the world at the given moment – she enjoys transforming reality, playing with objects and the audience’s expectations. Poska recently obtained MA degree in contemporary art at the Estonian Academy of Arts and she was given the Young Artist Award. Poska’s two recent works “For Your Nirvana” (2020) and “Untititled” (2021) were nominated to the Estonian Theatre Awards in the category of dance and performance art.

Original photo: Helemai Alamaa

Thank you for the dialogue and technical assistance: Theodore Parker and Maret Tamme.

Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

Tallinn Art Hall
14.09–16.11.2022

EKA Contemporary Arts’s alumni at the exhibition!

Journeys can sometimes be life-altering. Over the atmospheric and geopolitical heat of the summer of 2022, curators Corina L. Apostol and Kristaps Ancāns, head of Estonian Academy of Arts’ Contemporary Arts MA program, invited eight artists, four based in Estonia and four in Latvia, to travel across the Baltic coast to discover each other and create this exhibition together. Working in collaboration, each of them brings their personal approach to art practice and co-habitation of the exhibition space at Tallinn Art Hall Gallery in the show I came here to be alone – I also came here to be alone.

The exhibition I came here to be alone – I also came here to be alone draws inspiration from a 1959 film Baltic Express by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, which revolves around the communication between two strangers, forced to co-exist in confined conditions – the claustrophobic world of a tight train cabin. The train journey is a catalyst which tests what kind of chemistry can be created in unstable and uncertain conditions. From the perspective of a passenger, everything in the world is in motion, while from the perspective of someone not on the train it is quite the opposite. Baltic Express reflects on these two phenomena and focuses on a pivotal moment in time. Every story we tell or read about home or about our recent history, now has a different landscape looking out of the window of this train. The world as we know it is no longer the same, and our imaginative space has transformed.

In the foreword of the exhibition booklet, curators Corina L. Apostol and Kristaps Ancāns explain: “This exhibition reflects the many interactions, stories and intertwined experiences that open a certain void that has exploded in our societies during the pandemic and the current crises, revealing what had been masked by an emptiness that still lingers. How should we act, how can we trust each other, and what does this new crisis-era culture look like? Turbulences can sometimes open new ways of approaching things, as we no longer need to follow canons that have been built beforehand. Have the “new us” developed the skills or even some superpowers to cope with transformation or are our levels of loss and grief quietly rising? How do we deal with what has happened and the present challenges, while still waiting for the train to arrive at a new destination?“

Once they got to know one another’s different yet related contexts, collaborating, living and making art together gradually acquired a deeper meaning for the eight participating artists. Transforming and taking over the gallery windows, Dzelde Mierkalne and Junny Yeung have built two claustrophobic, almost cinematic environments, reflecting on how in the current times the home and the workspace have become enmeshed into an uncomfortable functional third space. Johannes Luik and Krišjānis Elviks’ works create the scenography of this exhibition from what has been left behind – or from someone left behind after a journey. Through their own bodies, Alise Putniņa and Maarja Tõnisson test in repetitions how our mind and body connects or disconnects in everyday journeys when something disrupts our intentions. Alyona Movko-Mägi and Madara Gruntmane have created a series of moving digital avatars of locals from Riga reciting love poems. The videos make them seen, not less than human, but also not like us in an avatar state.

Dr. Corina L. Apostol is a curator at the Tallinn Art Hall, curator, and member of the steering committee of the international practice-based research project Beyond Matter (2019–2023), and the curator of the Estonian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). Corina is also a guest lecturer at MA POST, Art Academy of Latvia. She is the co-founder of ArtLeaks, and editor-in-chief of the ArtLeaks Gazette. She was longlisted for the Kandinsky Prize (2016) and the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize (2020). She is the winner of the apexart 2022–23 exhibition proposals competition in New York.

Kristaps Ancāns is an artist, writer, and educator whose practice spans installation, sculpture, language and moving images. His practice investigates the confusion between humanity, nature, and machines through a conceptual game with its own artificial intelligence. Ancāns was awarded the Cecil Lewis Sculpture Scholarship and the Helen Scott Lidgett Award. He is the co-head of POST, the interdisciplinary master’s program at the Art Academy of Latvia.

After the opening, on Wednesday, September 14 at 6.30 pm, curators Corina Apostol and Kristaps Ancāns will give a guided tour in English at the exhibition. I came here to be alone – I also came here to be alone will be open at the Art Hall Gallery until 6 November 2022.

Art Hall Gallery (Vabaduse väljak 6) is open from Wednesday to Sunday 11-6 pm, free entry.
The Tallinn 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.

The exhibitions of Tallinn Art Hall are installed by Valge Kuup.

www.kunstihoone.ee www.facebook.com/TallinnaKunstihoone/
www.instagram.com/tallinnarthall/

Further information:
Sirli Oot
+372 5873 6841
sirli@kunstihoone.ee

On the 2nd of September the recent graduates and current second years of the Masters of Contemporary Art Program will hold a studio sale at Uus Rada, Raja 11a.

Participating Artists include: Brenda Purtsak, Eero Alev, Heli Haav, Jamie Dean Avis, Janne Lias, Johannes Luik, Junny Yeung, Katariin Mudist, Kati Müüripeal, Lily Marleen Verilaskja, Maris Paal, Marleen Suvi, Maryliis Teinfeldt-Grins, Noah E. Morrison, Olev Kuma, Samuel Lehikoinen, Solveig Lill, Sophie Durand, Triin Türnpuu, Tõnis Laurson, Zody Burke

The aim of the event is to help generate sales of works to support the transition into professional practice following graduation and financing of projects to be produced in the final year of graduate studies. 100% of the money generated from sales will go to the artist. It will be a salon style exhibition, each artist will participate with up to 3 works in a salon style exhibition which will be held at Uus Rada (Raja 11a).

Available artworks can be seen AT THIS LINK 

Opening Reception:

2nd September 2022 – 19:00 – 22:00

The exhibition will be open to the public

3rd September 2022 from 12 – 18

4th September 2022 from 12 – 18

Sold works will be available for collection on the 5th of September.

Please contact Sophie Durand for more information at sophie.durand@artun.ee or +37256256468

FB: https://fb.me/e/2HiBXu8cc 

Katariin Mudist at Tartu Art House
“To-Do or Not-To-Do”
29.07.–28.08.22

The exhibition, showcasing themes that have long intrigued the artist, focuses on a newly completed monumental piece the exhibition has been named after. The 9-meter-long mixed media composition speaks of the contemporary productivity culture and anxiety relating to both action and inaction resulting from the global pandemic situation.

The inspiration behind the exhibited works is Mudist’s longtime self-critical study centered around to-do lists that have accumulated over several years. The central piece “To-Do or Not-To-Do” visualises activities along with their temporal dimensions – starting new activities, as well as interruptions – and treats this input as anthropological and psychological data which, in turn, reveals interesting patterns describing both the pace of life and the state of mind of an individual.

The exhibition and artwork of the same name are at once personal and remarkably universal studies visualising choices, disruption, inactivity, and exhaustion – both the internal and the societal pressure to be productive.

Katariin Mudist (b 1994) has studied in the Tartu Art College and the Estonian Academy of Arts, supplementing her skills in Budapest and in Ghent. Her previous solo exhibition in Tartu was in 2020 in the Jakobi Gallery.

The exhibition is supported: Estonian Cultural Foundation and Anderson’s craft beer

Exhibition design: Alden Jõgisuu

Exhibition team: Tanel Asmer, Elika Kiilo-Kulpsoo, Johanna Mudist, Peeter Talvistu, Urmo Teekivi and Mae Variksoo

Thanks: Sander Koit, Alan Voodla, Sophie Durand and Maria Elise Remme

The exhibition is open until 28 August

Tartu Art House (Vanemuise 26, Tartu, Estonia) Wed–Mon 12–18. Exhibitions are free of charge

The exhibitions of the Tartu Art House are supported by the Tartu Town Government and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The exhibition Halcyon, by Estonian contemporary artist Kadri Liis Rääk, is happening in the capital of Peru, Lima.

Welcome to the inaugural exhibition of Now: Gallery, in which Kadri Liis Rääk exhibits tufted soft sculptures inspired by the bubbling abundance of life, ceramic forms inspired by symbiotic landscapes and microbes, and chimerically transformed industrial design. In her works, we witness a speculative utopian world built, where various biological life forms meet at the hub of the rhizome, conversing with sensitive ways of being together.

Kadri Liis Rääk’s work evolves from an empathetic worldview where touch carries a crucial role in gathering information and relating to one-another. At the exhibition, she exhibits works prepared in Reykjavík, at SIM residency, but also in the residency which preceded the exhibition in Lima. Halcyon is curated by Marika Agu.

One of the founders and gallerist of Now: Gallery, Renzo Pittaluga remarked on the connection between Kadri Liis’ textile and ceramic practice with traditional Peruvian artforms. “What Kadri Liis has absorbed with her research and experiences is very relevant in the local context,” said Pittaluga.

11.08. – 14.09.2022

Now: Gallery, Av. Conquistadores 780, San Isidro, Lima, Peru.