Category: Gallery

The opening of the exhibition Weak Monument will take place on February 21st at 8PM. The opening is preceded by Välkloeng at 6PM, moderated by Laura Linsi and Roland Reemaa.

Weak Monument was the Estonian national pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. It was located in the deconsecrated church of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice. The exhibition at the EAA Gallery looks back at the site-specific spatial installation through photographer Hampus Berndtson’s photos and introduces the project through spatial fragments, models and the book Weak Monument: Architectures Beyond the Plinth.

 Weak Monument turns its focus from the traditional culture of monuments to space that is implicitly and concealedly political. Instead of explicit meanings inscribed in marble and bronze, what charges the public might lie elsewhere. How does space represent power? Imagine a spectrum between the triumphal column and revolutionary barricade and extend it – sometimes it is the underlying pavement which is the true representation of collective agency. Weak Monument is an oxymoron – a rhetorical device which can offer fresh perspectives on how to recognise the political in any built form.

In conjunction with the pavilion, the book Weak Monument – Architectures Beyond the Plinth edited by the curators Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa and Tadeas Riha was published by Park Books (Zürich, 2018). The book includes essays by authors such as Tom Avermaete, Eik Hermann, Klaus Platzgummer and Margrethe Troensegaard, and presents a collection of weak monuments through paintings, personal photos and drawings as well as archive material from Estonian and European museums.

The next exhibition at EKA Gallery is The world’s biggest EKA Gallery-exhibited work by PRIIT, a group of artists from EKA. The exhibition is open only for a week, on February 12–17 and is accessible 24/7.

PRIIT has said about the exhibition: “Space becomes installation and installation becomes space again. A trans-medium and multidimensional work fills the entire space and is in terms of its parameters the biggest work that will ever be shown in that gallery. What do we have to sacrifice to completely subordinate space to ourselves at the exhibition? We experience defiance at the white cube, experience a loss and rediscovery of self in the abstract information field of non-objects.”

PRIIT is a group of artist including Riin Maide, Sidney Lepp, Johannes Luik, Cristo Madissoo, Nele Tiidelepp. Earlier, PRIIT has produced two slightly place-specific and quite experimental exhibitions – Placeless in a Kadriorg rental flat and The Fifth Ice Age before the Third World War in the Tartu culture club Üheteistkümnes.

The collaborate exhibition implies the question of what is being hidden/revealed from the observers. The focus is on the relationships between inner and outer layers, covering and core, mask and truth. Covering or wrapping functions as the filter transmitting or blocking out the qualities of contents. In a selective way, it’s shaping the communication between inside and out. Both artists are approaching the topic in slightly different ways.

Liina Leo (b.1993) received a bachelor’s degree in Textile Design from the Estonian Academy of Arts this June and was awarded the Mari Adamson Prize. She complemented her undergraduate program with a one year at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee specializing in surface design. Beginning this autumn, Liina is working as a weaving workshop tutor at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Misa Asanuma (b.1994) is an artist from Japan. She studied literature at Meiji University, Tokyo. She is currently in the middle of her MA studies in the department of Contemporary Art of the Estonian Academy of Arts and mainly working on photography.

“We are pleased to invite you to the opening of the Estonian Association of Interior Architects exhibition called 80 Years of Interior Architecture Studies on Tuesday, November 20^th at 6 p.m at EKA Gallery.

The exhibition curated by Karin Paulus tells the story of eighty years of interior architecture studies in Estonia. The exhibition will feature exciting student projects and furniture designs, the department’s faculty members as well as academic events and fun undertakings. The designer of the exhibition is Toivo Raidmets, the longtime director of the Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Department.

A seminar will take place in the Estonian Academy of Arts auditorium on November 23^rd. More information available soon.
The exhibition will be open until 5 January 2019.

Curator: Karin Paulus
Contact: karinpaulus@gmail.com

Find room A200, and come explore the results of the chair design studio that our interior architecture and architecture students take during their first year at EKA.

These are the same chairs that we exhibited at the Helsinki Design Week a few weeks back, and the pop-up exhibition is going to be open only until Friday, so hurry!

Tutors: Ilkka Suppanen and Martin Relander

Join us for the opening of the Young Sculptor Award 2018 exhibition “Prediction and Preservation” on October 3 at 6 pm. This is the first show at the gallery’s new location in the Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhja pst 7.

The exhibition focuses on the present, or maybe even different quests for the present. The present should be a place where the decisions about the past and the future are born. Therefore, the present itself is the most uncharted and unstable space-time. The future may seem like it has been before—a conventional, predictable and unchanging product of imagination and fiction. The real world is the place where unforeseen events are happening. It presents ethical problems that are more vexing than reminisces of the past or projections for the future. Welcome to the present moment, where the instruments are real space and active time units!

Artists who work with space and object fix their minds on the time dimension and the temporary; they ask how and what we perceive in our current space, and how it will be seen as it changes into the past. How the environment designs the future? How can we design ourselves for being present in the present? How values are created by things that happened or were perceived to happen in this space? Can the space become outdated or postponed?

The 2018 Young Sculptor Award show is the seventh in this series. The main goal of the show and its award is to highlight young sculptors and installation artists, support their creative production and open it to a wider public. Works are accepted to the show through open call for the sculpture and installation students, works have to be produced during the ongoing academic year. The grand prix and the second and third prize are awarded by an international jury. The awards are travels to important art events around the world.

Participating artists: Darja Krasnopevtseva, Izabella Neff, Johannes Luik, Katrin Enni, LAURi, Nele Tiidelepp, Olesja Semenkova, Richard Engel, Valetto Alexandre

Exhibition is organised by installation and sculpture department of the Estonian Academy of Arts. Tutors: Taavi Talve, Taavi Piibemann, Kirke Kangro, Art Allmägi. Technical assistance: Sander Haugas. Graphic design: Stuudio Stuudio.

Exhibition is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

On 8 December at 17.00 EKA Gallery invites you to the opening of “Pinky-Swear”, a solo exhibition by Noëmi Merca.

“Ghostly light ahead of me in the darkness. A disembodied voice starts calling to reach the other side. An echo piercing *din/dong* and never fades. ‘—Is that you? I hear someone talking back. Or is it me? Have I begun to crack?’ ‘—Inhale.’ (eyes open). ‘— Exhale.’ (eyes closed).

Heart break memories, I have stacks. ‘—So tell me, what do I lack?’ ‘—To only feel love in moments of hate?’ ‘—As I set fire to surroundings I had already instigate?’
Beyond the mirror, I see cracks. A sense of pressure with no more room. Read scars share stories of many attacks. And Echo roars back with a sonic boom.”

Noëmi Merca (b. 1991, FR) lives and works in Paris. Co-founder of www.dieselprojectspace.be with Xavier Mary. Her recent exhibitions include: ‘Fallen Angels’ (2017) in duo with Bora Akincitürk at Komplot, Brussels (BE), ‘Bubble Tea’ (2016) with PANE project, Milan (IT). Upcoming exhibition in duo with Tatiana Karl Pez (2018).

The exhibition is open until 13 January, 2018.
Graphic design: Noëmi Merca and Jakob Tulve

Special thanks to Magnus Morel, Tatiana Karl Pez, Keiu Krikmann, Lorenzo Targhetta, Jakob Tulve and Xavier Mary.

You are invited to present project and exhibition ideas for the EAA Gallery space at Vabaduse väljak 6/8, Tallinn.  The open call ends on November 15.  Read on!