Category: Faculty of Fine Arts

“Plato’s Tent” and “Not Here and Not Quite There” joint exhibition at ARS Art Factory 

ARS Art Factory Studio 53/98 17.05-19.05.2024 

Open Fri-Sun from 12:00 to 20:00 

Opening at 18:00 on 17th of May 

Animation and New Media students have listened, recorded, cut, transformed, visualized and installed sounds in Studio 53 and 98 in ARS Art Factory, officially opening the exhibition to the public at 18:00 on 17th of May. Works from 24 artists range from immersive audiovisual installations to delicate listening experiences, drawing inspiration from a diverse array of sources, including wildlife, mycelium growth, football stadium crowds, refracted glass, environmental shifts, squeaky toys, and technological intricacies. 

The works are presented in a joint exhibition made of two parts: the Animation MA’s alcove of abstracted visions “Plato’s Tent” (Studio 53), showing works that combine animation and sound, and the installations working with sites and “Not Here and Not Quite There” (Studio 98), featuring installations that explore sites and sounds from the New Media Sound Art 

studies module. The exhibition will be open for only three days, with extended viewing hours. 

The exhibition stems from two parallel courses focused on sound studies at EKA: ‘Sound Design’ at the Animation Department supervised by Bruno Quast and ‘Sound Art & Spatial Sound Experiments’ supervised by Sten Saarits, which is part of the Sound Art Connected Studies programme at New Media Arts. 

Artists: Ako Allik, Julia Virkki, Melina Unterhauser, Meret Stockhecker, Nils Geffre, Ott Kattel, Yiyang Sun, Chia-Hui Lei, Christopher Stephen Galinos, Leo Mourey, Lukas Wind, Melissa Noack, Shunyuan Yao, Valerie Sarle, Vilmos Peter, Lyza Karoly Jarvis Graphic design: Christopher Stephen Galinos 

The Exhibition is kindly supported by the Estonian Academy of Arts and the Estonian Artists’ Association for their support. 

Free admission 

ARS: https://www.arsfactory.ee/ 

EKA Animation: https://www.artun.ee/en/curricula/animation/ 

EKA New Media: https://www.artun.ee/en/curricula/new-media/ 

Portfolio Café is a portfolio feedback event held annually during spring semester as a satellite to EKA graduation show TASE. It is designed as a series of one-on-one meetings between invited art field professionals and EKA Fine Art’s BA and MA students. Each meeting lasts approximately 30 minutes. During these sessions, students present themselves and their work, while experts offer feedback, ask questions, and share insights.

Registration: Portfolio Café invites all fine arts students from the BA and MA levels to participate. Participants will be selected based on their submitted portfolios. Limited spots! To apply, please fill out this registration form lates on June 3.

Portfolio Café 2024 takes place on June 7 from 10:00-16:00 at EKA Library. All Portfolio Café sessions are held in English.

EXPERTS

Juliane Foronda (she/her) is a Filipina-Canadian artist, writer, and researcher. Predominantly through object, intervention and text, her practice is invested in radical care, feminist hospitality, and traditions of gathering. She’s influenced by (found and fabricated) structures, built environments, and hidden labour, and her work negotiates how these notions play with the tension between reality and possibility, truth and imagination, and knowing and not knowing. A significant aspect of her arts practice involves archival and collections research. Her investment in this work unfolds with her affinity of learning about what people choose to keep close and why, as well as how communities are built, maintained, and preserved. She earned her MA in Fine Arts from Listaháskóli Íslands/Iceland University of the Arts, and her BA in Studio Art from the University of Guelph. She is a current resident at the Helsinki International Artist Programme (FI). 

www.julianeforonda.hotglue.me

Jussi Koitela is an independent curator and Head of Programme at Frame Contemporary Art Finland and will move to a new position as a Director of M-cult in June 2024. His curatorial work intertwines art, embodied research methods, urban spatial contexts, collaboration, hospitality, and materiality in various forms of exhibitions and knowledge production. 

He is currently curator of the Pavilion of Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia together with Yvonne Billmore (20 April -24 November 2024). Between 2019 to 2023 they also curated ‘Rehearsing Hospitalities’, Frame’s public programme. He is also curating “Measures” Survival Kit 2024 exhibition organised by Latvian Center of Contemporary Art, opening September 2024 in Riga. 

His selected curatorial work includes: Conflicting Relations at Vera List Center for Art and Politics, New York, Editorial Tables: Reciprocal Hospitalities at The Showroom, London, Secured – Politics of Bodies and Space at Vantaa Art Museum Artsi. Performing the Fringe at Konsthall C, Stockholm and Pori Art Museum, Pori Entangling Matter and Meaning/Intra-Structures – Monster of the Seven Lakes at Treignac Projet, Mattering City at SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen, City Agents at Estonian Museum of Contemporary Art (EKKM), Tallinn, Skills of Economy Sessions at Finnish Theatre Academy, Baltic Circle Festival and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, and Untitled (two takes on crises) – You Must Make Your Death Public at de Appel Art Centre, Amsterdam.  

He has edited, among others, Rehearsing Hospitalities Companions 1-4 published by Archive Books, 2019 – 2022 with Yvonne Billimore, the Finnish Art Policy Handbook published by Checkpoint Helsinki/Publics and Baltic Circle Festival 2015, Falling In — Movement and Becoming in Curatorial Research with Dahila El Broul and Ksenia Kaverina, published by Mousse Publishing, 2024 and The pleasures we choose with Yvonne Billimore, published by k.verlag, 2024. 

Mailis Timmi is a curatorial MA student at Estonian Academy of Arts and the founder and director of Tütar Gallery. Prior to her immersion in the art world, Mailis spent 17 years in strategic communications and advertising, where she gained experience in supporting younger generation artists in their quest to be seen and recognised. 

www.tutar.ee

Florian & Michael Quistrebert are an artist duo whose recent work explores the paradoxes between the sacred and the material through immersive exhibitions that combine paintings and videos. Both artists graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Nantes and have collaborated since 2007. The duo focuses on the power and fascination of light, often creating immersive experiences that provoke extra-optical and synesthetic perceptions among viewers.

Florian & Michael Quistrebert’s works are included in numerous public and private collections. Their notable exhibitions include “Visions of Void” at Dundee Contemporary Arts in 2015, “The Light of the Light” at Palais de Tokyo in 2016, “ZigZag” at CCCOD in Tours in 2019, and “Silent Symphony” at Dirimart in Istanbul. The artists often design their exhibition spaces to resemble a luminous opera, featuring dynamic elements such as blazing torments, lightning rays, serene shimmers, and crescendos of illumination.

http://www.quistrebert.com/

Kaarel Kurismaa. Beyond the Limits of Timelessness
Documentary
59 min
Estonia 2024

A documentary about the Estonian artist Kaarel Kurismaa shows the viewer an insight into the world of artists.

Kaarel Kurismaa laid the foundations for Estonian kinetic and sound art. He is a highly versatile artist whose creative energy is divided between painting, sound, installation, monumental art, and film. Kaarel has changed his creative direction several times; he has explored different artistic styles. 

On the crest of the avant-garde wave of the 1970s, he created several important sound and kinetic objects in Estonian art history. From the mid-1970s, Kurismaa worked as an artist, director, and cinematographer at Eesti Joonisfilm and Nukufilm. In the 1980s, Kurismaa became more interested in making space and monumental art. He created a number of remarkable public space objects that synthesised the key elements of his work – sound and movement. Only one of these objects has survived to this day – the Tallinn tram.

The 1990s marked another turning point in Kurismaa’s work. Sound objects inspired by pop art aesthetics were replaced by contemporary site-specific space and sound installations.

The film features friends and colleagues of Kaarel Kurismaa: Tiit Pääsuke, Tamara Luuk, Olga Temnikova, Ragne Soosalu, Sirje Helme, Andres Kurg and Kiwa, who share their experiences and talk about their collaboration with the artist. We can see unique archival footage and private archive photographs, get a glimpse of the work of various artists, and follow the process of creating art. 

Director: Aljona Suržikova

Producer: Sergei Trofimov

diafilm.ee

On Tuesday 7.05 at 19:00, the exhibition “Ruhig Dimma” by Charlotte Gisele Chapuis and Clio Pavlidis Andersson will open in Lainurga Gallery.

Location: on the 4th floor in front of the photography department, B-405
Start of the exhibition: 07.05 19:00
End of the exhibition: 21.05

Two artists from two different countries exhibit works from their personal archives, resulting in a blend of intimate portraits and still landscapes. They might have different backgrounds, but their two narratives meet in a longing for home and an appreciation for the connections created around them. “Ruhig Dimma” exhibits intimacy and symbolism, by using close to heart-photographies and found objects complementing the pictures.

Clio Pavlidis Andersson (b. 1998) is currently on exchange at Estonian Academy of Arts and is studying her second year at the BFA programme in photography, at HDK-Valand. Her practice often features family and close friends as central figures, allowing her to delve into the soreness and fragility that inevitably comes with long and deep relationships.

Charlotte Giséle Chapuis (b. 1998) is studying her fourth year at the BFA programme in photography at Folkwang University of Arts and is also currently on exchange at Estonian Academy of Arts. Rooted in closeness and vulnerability, she’s working a lot with her own archive material, trying to find and show patterns that tell an intimate story.

Supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonian and Estonian Academy of Arts

Pavlo Stepanenko is hosting a TEKKEN 8 tournament for newcomers to the game or those with little genre knowledge.

Experienced players are also welcome to join and face off against worthy opponents. Join us!

It will be occasion to discover as well other fighting games from videogame designer and producer, Takashi Nishiyama or Katsuhiro Harada.

Place EKA room B-305

Time: 17:00

https://www.facebook.com/share/thwWUSydQ7P6fQnU/?mibextid=9l3rBW

Ukrainian designer Pavlo Stepanenko is invited by EKA New Media department to give a talk about fighting games in room B305:

“As for me, this kind of interactivity between people, often presented as a conflict in a negative light, is not always so. I would like to invite you to discuss the genre of video games, which, for me, helps solve this problem.”

Place EKA room B-305 Time: 17:00

FB 

May 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 animation, contemporary art, installation and sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking, scenography curricula will be on display. On each evening 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.

On the day of the evaluation, the exhibition is open from 3 to 6 pm, exhibitions held over several days are open from 12 to 6 pm on the following day.

SCHEDULE:

Mon 29.04. Drawing, supervisors Maiu Rõõmus, Matti Pärk
Tue 30.04. Drawing, supervisors Eero Alev, Britta Benno
Wed 1.05. the gallery is closed
Thu 2.05. Drawing, supervisor Ulvi Haagensen
Fri 3.05. Drawing and painting, supervisors Britta Benno, Brenda Purtstak
Sat 4.05. – Sun 5.05. Abstract drawing, supervisor Lembe Ruben-Kangur

Mon 6.05. Photography, supervisor Madis Kurss
Tue 7.05. – Wed 8.05. Photography, supervisor Marge Monko
Thu 9.05. – Fri 10.05. Painting, supervisors Eero Alev, Mihkel Ilus, Holger Loodus, Jaan Toomik
Sat 11.05. – Sun 12.05. Painting, supervisors Sirja-Liisa Eelma, Kristi Kongi, Holger Loodus

Mon 13.05. Contemporary Art, supervisors Anu Vahtra, Kristi Kongi, Camille Laurelli, Marge Monko, Liina Siib, Taavi Talve, Eve Kask, Laura Põld, David K. Ross, Jaan Toomik, Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo
Tue 14.05. Printmaking, supervisors Maria Erikson, Merilin Metsamaa, Mirjam Varik, Lembe Ruben-Kangur, Sandra Puusepp
Wed 15.05. Animation, supervisors Lilli-Krõõt Repnau, Lucija Mrzljak, Anu-Laura Tuttelberg
Thu 16.05. Scenography, supervisors Liina Keevallik, Mark Raidpere
Fri 17.05. Scenography, supervisors Renzo Alexander Van Steenbergen
Sat 18.05. Drawing, supervisor Lilli-Krõõt Repnau
Sun 19.05. the gallery is closed

Mon 20.05. Printmaking, supervisors Eve Kask, Viktor Gurov, Erik Alalooga, Eve Kaaret, Monica Langwe

On Thursday, April 25, at 6 p.m., the exhibition “Allow Yourself to Change” will be opened in the ARS Project Space on the intersection of painting and artificial branches.

At the center of painting has always been humanity with its special flaws and virtues – the uniqueness and imperfection of the human hand, the inability to perform movements quickly and flawlessly and to repeat them identically has been the core of painting throughout the centuries-long history of the medium. While today’s artificial intelligence can create flawless forms at lightning speed, repeat them an infinite number of times, and draw images from the entire stock of human visual culture.

But what happens when the slow processuality of painting meets a working method that quickly and efficiently involves machine art instances and global data arrays? What role could an art oriented to deceleration have in the era of total acceleration, when people trust themselves more and more in the care of such technological systems, the working mechanisms of which they do not know, for the sake of efficiency, competitiveness and economic growth?

The exhibition features five Estonian artists, who in recent years have devoted themselves to the study of the relationship between painting and the artificial branch and cross traditional painting techniques with various digital technologies. Vano Allsalu feeds the artificial forest with paintings in his signature style and maps its capabilities in an abstract way of expression; Gerda Hansen plays with the idea of whether a painter of the era of machine art can step into the same river twice; Siiri Jüris allows his figural abstract paintings to mutate with the help of digital technology; Carl-Robert Kagge uses Photoshop’s generative fill feature to create painting screens, and Mart Vainre has developed an ouroboros analog-digital-analog color transformer. The curator of the exhibition is Liisa Kaljula, who works in the painting collection of the Estonian Art Museum and has curated several art exhibitions.

The preparation process of the exhibition is different from the usual curated group exhibition – the curator and the artists have met regularly in the studios of the participating artists to discuss the new situation in which art has been placed by the powerful appearance of the artificial branch: could painting, with its celebration of slowness, physical work and human error, be a counterculture of the age of digital acceleration? The temporary community created between the participants has helped to make sense of this moment in time, when the paths of painting and artificial branches inevitably cross and human and machine intertwine.

Artists: Vano Allsalu, Gerda Hansen, Siiri Jüris, Carl-Robert Kagge, Mart Vainre
Curator: Liisa Kaljula
Graphic design: Carl-Robert Kagge
Exhibition project manager: Mart Vainre
Installation: Johannes Säre

The exhibition “Allow yourself to change.” From painting in the age of machine art” will remain open in the ARS Projektiruumi until May 18, 2024.

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Cultural Foundation and the Estonian Artists’ Union, the opening is supported by Põhjala.

In connection with the ARS Open Ateliers Day, on May 17th, tours conducted by the exhibition participants will take place, the finale of the exhibition will end with a discussion about the relationship between painting and new technologies.

ARS Projektiruum, Pärnu mnt 154, Tallinn

Open Mon-Sat 12-6pm

Free entrance

arsfactory.ee

Singular Inner Worlds

Marju Mutsu and Reti Saks (Laanemäe) 

This exhibition presents the graduation projects of two notably distinct female print artists: Marju Mutsu (1941–1980), who graduated in 1969, and Reti Saks, formerly Laanemäe (1960), who obtained her diploma in print art in 1987. From the outset, both artists displayed a unique and unmistakable style. They both engrave their visions with a sharp needle onto the acid resistant layer of a metal plate using intaglio printing, specifically etching. Their interpretations of the world are profound and characterised by a strong sense of generalisation – albeit expressed in entirely different ways.

Marju Mutsu’s vibrant series Youth comprises six prints, each titled thematically: Wind, Truth, Tenderness, Song, School and Earth. On one hand, we observe the spirit of the 1960s reflected here, capturing the fast-paced rhythms of contemporary life, alongside determined-looking men with strong jawlines. On the other hand, we encounter unprecedented forms in Estonian printmaking, witty suggestions, fragmentation of the pictorial space, as well as emotional experiences, mental states, and the beauty of nature’s fragments. The uniqueness of Mutsu’s print art lies not only in its dynamic expression and Astrid Lindgren-like humour, but also in its exploration of all the possibilities of intaglio printing and bold experimentation: at times, the plate is not completely wiped clean of printing ink, the outlines of recognisable figures blend into abstraction, and the surface of the printing plate itself becomes a character.

The joyful print artist departed from us prematurely, at the young age of just 39.

Reti Saks’ series of seven images Games exudes a more subdued and static tone. From the outset, the artist has been on a quest for answers to life’s profound mysteries, delving into the enigma of life and death. The depth of exploration, sometimes even penetrating the surface of the image itself, is evident in the sheet titled Deep Print. Other prints, like Stairs, Ribbon and Walker, signify human choices, whereas works such as Eye to Eye, Hand and Picture illustrate the enigmatic ways in which the world can be perceived. The artist reflects the world through herself, with her images literally bearing her own visage. In a metaphysical expanse of imagery, a semi-frozen figure of a child-woman emerges, often in repetitive iterations, reminiscent of the artist herself. This deeply introspective exploration of the world is both painful and melancholic, yet it is also rich and multi-layered.

Reeli Kõiv
curator of the exhibition

Graphic design: Pärtel Eelmere