Category: Painting

GENTLE GESTURES OF SELF
7.–31.03.2024
Opening: 7.03. at 6 pm

Participating artists: Andre Joosep Arming, Annamaari Hyttinen, Cloe Jancis, Maria Izabella Lehtsaar, Taavi Rekkaro, Johanna Saikkonen, Marleen Suvi, Elo Vahtrik
Curator: Kaisa Maasik

The group exhibition “Gentle Gestures of Self” brings together a selection of contemporary self-portraits. The paintings and photographs primarily depict the faces and hands of the artists, pointing at the emotions brought out by their facial expressions and gestures.

Culturally, hands are attributed with a great expressive power: in addition to conveying mood, depicting hands in specific positions can communicate deep feelings and meanings. Anthropologist Ethel J. Alpenfels has said: “Hands point or lead or command; hands cry out in agony or lie quietly sleeping; hands have moods, character, and, in a wider sense, their own particular beauty.”

The exhibition stems from a curatorial perspective focusing on relationships, inner experiences and moods. It approaches hands’ special ability and vulnerability to convey all emotions, even those that people have learned to control in facial expressions.

Opening drinks from Põhjala Brewery.

EKA Gallery
Kotzebue 1, Tallinn
Open Tue–Sun 12–18, free entry

More info:
eka.galerii@artun.ee

13.02-20.02 Alexei Gordin’s exhibition “This School Produces Useless Losers” will be open at Täisnurga Gallery.

The exhibition opening will be held on 12.02. at 18:00.

The exhibition is focused around the adventures of one artist in the world of Delfi comment section. It is said that there is no need to prove anything to anyone on the internet, but reality shows that users always want to prove something and what they say about art does not match what artists think about themselves. So who is right, and why does such a harmless phenomenon as art upset so many people? The exhibition consists of screenshots and found objects to which the artist gave a new meaning using phrases, slogans and puns inspired by the Delfi comment section.

Alexei Gordin (born in 1989) studied painting in Tallinn and Helsinki and currently lives and works in Tallinn.

Although he has a background in painting, Gordin fluently uses different media and works with drawing, photography, video, and performance.

The main subject matter of his artistic practice is absurdly stereotypical thinking and behaviour patterns of people in contemporary mass society. Gordin’s works are almost always narrative in nature and often cover exciting or annoying situations. In the early years of his career, filthy slums, empty industrial landscapes, marginalised and stigmatised social groups, and vulgar jokes constituted the core atmosphere of Gordin’s work.

The harsh reality of the art world has now become one of his main topics and the artist has himself become the protagonist. Scenes scattered with black humour deconstruct the image of the professional art world as something elitist and glamorous.

Gordin has won several photography competitions and in 2017 he was awarded the Young Painters’ Prize in Vilnius.

Täisnurga gallery is a project started in autumn 2023 by Karola Ainsar and Daria Morozova, which focuses on carefully selected intermediate stages and exhibiting newly completed works.

The gallery can be found by entering through the back door of the Painting Department (C201) of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

On Friday, 2 February at 5 p.m., the joint exhibition “Urge“ by Lisette Lepik and Brenda Purtsak will open in the monumental gallery of the Tartu Art House.

The curator of the exhibition is Kerly Ritval.

The exhibition brings together the artists and the curator to examine the diverse and mysterious nature of love. They explore boundaries and express in art what drives and fulfils human life: love.

Love can’t be truly expressed in words, is invisible to the eye, and is intangible, making it difficult to find, hold onto and let go of. It accompanies a person throughout life as a strongly beating urge.

The curator explains: “Brenda Purtsak’s artistic practice engages with the human body, drawing inspiration, among other things, directly from the operating table. By dissecting the human body with colours, she seeks answers to larger existential questions, such as: What is the biological force in the human body that pushes and pulls us toward each other? Lisette Lepik’s painting practice has focused on the body, sensations, sexuality and related traumas. In this exhibition, the artist expresses thoughts, feelings and fears related to love through her distinctive colour, composition and form language.”

The exhibition invites viewers on an introspective journey and into contemplation about desire, love, touch and fears, as well as the absence of love, searching and discoveries.

Brenda Purtsak (b. 1994) is an Estonian artist who graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a master’s degree in Contemporary Art (2022) and a bachelor’s degree in Painting (2020). She has been working as a lecturer at the Academy since 2023.

Lisette Lepik (b. 1999) is an Estonian artist based in Tallinn. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in painting from the Estonian Academy of Arts (2022) and furthered her studies in installation art at the Icelandic Academy of the Arts (2019). Since 2023, she has been working as a lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Kerly Ritval (b. 1996) is an Estonian curator and critic who completed a bachelor’s degree in art history and visual culture studies (2020) and a master’s degree in curatorial studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts (2023). She also supplemented her curatorial studies in Iceland (2022) and recently furthered her education in New York, assisting in producing the performance biennial Performa (2023).

Graphic designer: Rainer Kasekivi
Poetry used in the exhibition by Andres Anissimov

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment and the city of Tartu.

The exhibition will remain open until 3 March.

Open Mon-Sat at 15.00-18.00

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

01—02.12 Scenography, supervisor Mark Raidpere

04.12 Photography, supervisor Paul Kuimet

05.12 Drawing, supervisor Eero Alev

06.12 Painting, supervisors Tõnis Saadoja, Karl-Kristjan Nagel

07.12 Painting, supervisors Tõnis Saadoja, Anna Škodenko

08.12 Sculpture, supervisor Taavi Talve, Laura Põld

09.12 Drawing, supervisor Britta Benno

11.12 Graphic Art, supervisors Charlotte Biszewski, Heta Jäälinoja, Viktor Gurov, Katrin Kaev, Caroline Pajusaar, Liina Siib, Taavi Suisalu

12.12 Graphic Art, supervisors Kadi Kurema, Mark Antonius Puhkan, Charlotte Biszewski, Maria Izabella Lehtsaar, Eve Kaaret

13.12 Scenography, supervisor Tomo Stanič

14—15.12 Contemporary Art, supervisors Charlotte Emma Biszewski, Paul Kuimet, Camille Antoine Laurelli, Holger Loodus, Laura Põld, David Ross, Taavi Talve, Jaan Toomik, Anu Vahtra, Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo

16.12 Painting, supervisors Sirja-Liisa Eelma, Vladimir Dubossarsky, Mart Vainre

18—19.12 Contemporary Art, supervisors Charlotte Emma Biszewski, Sirja-Liisa Eelma, Maris Karjatse, Camille Antoine Laurelli, Laura Põld, David Ross, Sten Saarits, Liina Siib, Taavi Talve, Jaan Toomik, Anu Vahtra

20.12 Photography, supervisor Anna Mari Liivrand

On Friday, 17 November at 5:00 p.m. Alice Kask and Neeme Külm will open their joint exhibition “Something Righter in This” in the large gallery of the Tartu Art House. 

The exhibition is seemingly a continuation of the show “In Vanity Alone”, which Alice and Neeme organised in the Tallinn City Gallery a year ago. At the same time, it is also not. While the selection at that time was firmly orchestrated by Neeme, who worked as a demiurge transforming the comprehensible space into an incomprehensible one, today the roles have been switched and Alice has reclaimed the space which she had surrendered to Neeme, filling it with her large paintings. Neeme has handed over the reins saying: “Let grace accompany our actions”.

In the gallery, the artists still work independently and on their own, sometimes in a hectic manner, but mostly very self-confidently. Their work, despite differences in their thinking, actions and choices of media, still, miraculously, function together as a strong whole. The powerful symbolism with which they work does not shatter, but increases this unity.

Neeme sows wedges into the walls like budding flowers, replaces the alarm button with pearls for his sweetheart, opens a cello case like a confession and fills an archaic confessional with texts from his journal. Hidden behind the declarations of love and the hints of reconciliation, he also gently establishes himself and keeps a watchful eye over the whole space. The gaze is casual but still present, because somebody has to gaze.

The unmistakable Alice, who only dares to speak about herself, transforms her paintings into the attributes of femininity, concentrating on a lone figure, on a single item, but full of tension and on a grandiose scale. Ruthlessly precise in what she is trying to show, straightforward in concealing what deserves to be hidden. Only nature is left outside Alice’s penetrating gaze: she looks at it from a distance and sees it as something bigger than herself. The dark and dreary elements can only be captured vaguely, recorded only from a distance. So complicated and, at the same time, also so simple. As sincere as possible.

“A certain uncompromising discomfort for the inevitable corporeality of human consciousness” is present in the “striking spatial-poetic ping-pong” which accompanies the exhibition of Alice Kask and Neeme Külm. These were the words of the art critic Hanno Soans a year ago and, lo and behold, they indeed still hold true.

Alice Kask (b. 1976) graduated in 2002 from the master’s programme in painting of the Estonian Academy of Arts. Since her major solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonian (2016), she has recently shown her works at the Helsinki Art Hall (2018) and Rüki Gallery (2020). In 2008, she had a solo exhibition in the Tartu Art Museum. Among other accolades, in 2003 she received the Konrad Mägi Award.

Neeme Külm (b. 1974) graduated in 1998 from the Department of Sculpture of the Estonian Academy of Arts and studied in 2003–2005 in the master’s programme of interdisciplinary arts at the same school. His most powerful solo exhibitions took place in the first half of the 2010s and his more recent group shows have existed on the border between architecture and visual arts. Külm was one of the founders of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia.

The artists thank: Tamara Luuk, Kadri Villand, Johann Tanel Möldre, Lepo Külm, Berit Teeäär, Tiit Talvaru, Hilkka Hiiop and Päär Keedus.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The exhibition is open until 17 December.

*A bus will run from Tallinn to the opening of the exhibition. More information and registration here: https://forms.gle/xmanLQ1YxnixyuKv5

www.kunstimaja.ee

facebook.com/kunstimaja

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.

Exhibition How to be Here by the 3rd year students of the department of painting at the Estonian Academy of Arts will be opened in the hall of exhibitions in the library of the University of Tartu at 18:00 on Monday, October 16th, 2023.

Participating artists are: Karola Ainsar, Anaïs Dubois, Maria Hindreko, Liisa-Lota Jõeleht, Stanislav Alexander Mihheljus, Daria Morozova and Marc Léger Sauvageot 

All artworks exhibited at the current venue have been completed during this autumn, during the seven-week long studio practice. Therefore, this exhibition serves as a transient gesture of the present moment, reminding of a leaving a quick handwritten note to the audience while asking the question: how to be here. 

During the third year of their BA studies, students increasingly dedicate themselves to searching for their artist statement and unique style that often develops throughout years. These young artists are at the beginning of this journey. Even their paintings are simultaneously similar and different. While sharing the studio space, the artists share other things as well – they are influenced by common ideas, conversations and working hours. Even when seeking their individuality, the shared workspace connects them with each other. The inevitable solitude of a painter and the skill as well as the desire to cope with this solitude is something that they still have to experience in the future. 

The artist comment on their work as follows: 

Karola Ainsar: When I said that I desired to be away, I was already on the road. The field is endless, yet the rain has stopped and colours around me are entirely different than before. The gates take the shape of bridges and I want to know what’s there on the other side. I am already on my way. 

Anaïs Dubois: My purpose in painting is to create a world of my own where everything is possible. This world depicts different spaces like landscape and interior scenes that blend together to create an image. While working with the process of reappropriating my memories I create fragmented and colourful compositions in oil painting that question space and how we perceive it. 

Maria Hindreko: In my painting series I work with the means of collage. The starting point is the repetition of patterns and shapes as well as various contrasts: pink and green; geometric and ambiguous forms; spatiality and flatness; opacity and transparency. I depict these contrasting world with specific transitions characteristic of collages. 

Liisa-Lota Jõeleht: My works are inspired by risograph printing: in order to print photos, colour layers (blue, red, yellow and black) are separated and printed out in layers on top of each other. Small dots of colour blend thus creating new hues. When working on these paintings, I have been contemplating on how much so-called raw information could be included in an image that without any context won’t convey anything and leaving an abstract impression. I compare visuals with fossils where there is a trace of something specific, yet the image/object itself is absent. All we have is the knowledge about its existence. 

Alexander Stanislav Mihheljus: Sometimes you have to face the truth and accept that you don’t always have great ideas swimming around in your head. So, embrace what is given. The hay! 

Daria Morozova: My artwork “Language barrier” addresses the difficulties in expressing one’s emotions and thoughts, as well as the strong desire to communicate with the world either through one’s mother tongue or a foreign language. I often find it difficult to find the right words. I feel that every act of communication is inevietably distorted, words get stuck in your throat, get lost or misinterpreted so that you end up alone with these and your emotions. 

Marc Léger Sauvageot: In the painting series “Wrestle I” and “Wrestle II”, the underlying themes are the power of bodies, their mutual collisions and vulnerability. The artist uses bodies as a starting point to explore sexual identity and psychology while revealing the nuances of sensitivity and subconsious emotions. Various materials such as chalk primer, egg tempera and oil paint. 

Supervisor: Sirja-Liisa Eelma 

Technical support of the exhibition: Mihkel Ilus

Exhibition will be open until December 17, 2023.  

The hall of exhibitions in the library of the University of Tartu (Struve Street 1, Tartu) is open Mon-Fri 9–21, Sat-Sun 12–18. 

On Friday, 15th of September at 6 pm Holger Loodus will open his solo exhibition titled “Silver Bullet / Dinner for Four” at Vaal Gallery.

The exhibition brings together two parallel narratives presented as a cohesive unity through the mediums of painting and video.

The series of paintings titled “Dinner for Four” is about you and me and the unknown guests who come to visit us one evening from far away. The guests have come to provide answers to questions that have been bothering us for a long time – how to end wars and solve global problems; what the future of our planet will be; is humanity still sustainable or is it time to pack up and leave? And finally, as perhaps what we all think about, how can we become better human beings? At the same time, there are so many questions we would like to ask, but perhaps we are afraid to. What answers do they bring? We’ve never sat down with people who have no face, no body, and who don’t speak with words. But they talk a lot.

“Silver Bullet” is a video essay about a rifle bullet lost in space. A closer look reveals that a solitary character lives there inside. We don’t know how they got there, where they’re going or what they’re thinking. At the same time, inevitable processes and strange events are taking place. The artist wonders whether such phenomena take place inside every bullet on its journey.

The exhibition will remain open until 7th of October, Tue–Fri 12–6 pm, Sat 12–4 pm.

Holger Loodus (b 1970) is a musician, painter, multimedia and installation artist, as well as a lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts. His work is characterized by the construction of strange situations that at times strive towards fantastical realities or alternative histories. In order to do this, he uses analytical and poetic-philosophical visual means – from hyperrealist painting to mechanisms he himself has constructed and from video to staged installations. In 2018, Loodus participated in the exhibition of the Köler Prize nominees at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia and was awarded the People’s Choice Award. Since 2010, he has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Estonia, Lithuania, Finland and Germany, his most recent solo exhibitions took place at Kai Art Center (2023), Kogo Gallery (2021), Turku Art Museum (2019) and the Tallinn Art Hall Gallery (2017).

Contributors to the exhibition:
Sander Põldsaar – camera and post-production.
Katrin Enni – sound
Aaron Adam Bluds – passenger

The artist would like to thank: Rein Loodus, Kristel Altmäe, Andreas Altmäe, Iris Vilu, Mihkel Ilus, Jane Muts, Hans Lillemets, Tanel Paliale, Irma Bluds, Johannes Säre

Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

On September 6, 2023 at 18.00, the co-exhibition of Kelli Gedvil and Kristen Rästas Wake Me Up, When It’s All Over will open in Draakon Gallery.

Wake Me Up, When It’s All Over, the co-exhibition of Kelli Gedvili and Kristen Rästas, poetically reflects on the introverted urge to find shelter from everyday sensitivities and encapsulate in the digital world. The artists are focused on creating an atmosphere in which they explore the contemporary condition of humans living through one crisis after another.

EKA painting alumnus Alexei Gordin opens exhibition “Dreams Come True in this Gallery” in Vaal Gallery. 

“Recently, I was scanning the traces of my online existence and dug up my very first posted artwork, a 2006 pencil drawing called ‘A Place Under the Sun’. It has been 16 years since it happened, 10 of which I’ve been part of the professional art world, but the question about the right place under the Sun is still relevant. So where is the artist’s place?

To answer this question, one can speculate on various topics, but one thing is clear to me – the artist’s place is in the gallery. This can be taken as a devastating fact, because the principles and aims of art are beyond the four walls. In reality, however, it is between the walls of the gallery where professional art begins and ends, because only there can it be professionally rated. To quote O. Doherty: ‘From this moment on, there is a seepage of energy from art to its surroundings. With time the ratio between the literalization of art and mythification of the gallery inversely increases’.”

The exhibition “Dreams Come True in this Gallery” is a parody of a situation where someone is trying to find a way out of the art that is currently drowned in the gallery space. The title comes from the aesthetics of advertising industry, where market players sell promises to their customers that their dreams will come true, but the more the consumer invests energy in fulfilling their dreams, the more distant those dreams remain. Gordin’s approach to the question of the artist’s place under the Sun is autobiographical rather than conceptual. In philosophical terms, the artist’s place becomes ephemeral, dissolving into temporary concepts, residencies and biennials.

Alexei Gordin (b 1989) is mainly known as a painter, however, he also works with photography, video and performance. Using black humour, Gordin draws attention to the absurdity of the (art) world and alienation, highlighting issues like inequality and the difficulties of marginalised groups. Gordin’s work is influenced by caricatures and it combines texts and pictures, referring to comics and meme culture.

The exhibition will remain open until 1st of July, Tue–Fri 12–6 pm, Sat 12–4 pm.

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 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

02.05. Painting, supervisors Merike Estna, Alice Kask, Kristi Kongi, Holger Loodus
03.05. Photography, supervisor Madis Kurss
04.05. Drawing, supervisors Maiu Rõõmus, Matti Pärk
05.05. Drawing, supervisors Tõnis Saadoja
08.05. Drawing, supervisor Ulvi Haagensen
9.05. Drawing, supervisor Lilli-Krõõt Repnau
10.05. Drawing, supervisor Tõnis Saadoja
11.05. Graphic Art, supervisors Charlotte Biszewski, Eve Kask, Rene Haljasmäe, Viktor Gurov
12.05. Graphic Art, supervisors Kadi Kurema, Maria Erikson, Charlotte Biszewski, Britta Benno
15.05. Photography, supervisors Marge Monko, Paul Kuimet
16.—17.05. Scenography, supervisors Ene-Liis Semper, Mark Raidpere
18.—19.05. Contemporary Art, supervisors Marge Monko, Kirke Kangro, Merike Estna, Taavi Talve, Anu Vahtra, John Grzinich, Paul Kuimet, Taavi Piibemann, Sirja-Liisa Eelma, Eve Kask, David K. Ross