Eero Alev & Brenda Purtsak “Pretence” at EKA Gallery 11.02.–07.03.2020

Join us for the opening of the exhibition “Pretence” by Brenda Purtsak and Eero Alev on Tuesday, February 11 at 6 PM. The exhibition is curated by Holger Loodus.

With this exhibition, two young painters, Brenda Purtsak and Eero Alev portray a person through body and space. Right at the start of the project, the artists reached an agreement that they would not show the face of the person being portrayed. The challenge is to create tension – whether the viewer is able to follow the mystery put together by Purtsak and Alev. We get to know that the person being portrayed is a real human with his or her virtues and flaws. He or she has given artists permission to experiment, allowed them close and opened himself or herself up, as it is generally usual in a portrayal.
The viewers’ task is to be a detective and rebuild the whole from the pieces, so they invited to participate in the Hitchcock-like mystery of painting. The exhibition will remain open until March 7.

Brenda Purtsak (b. 1994) and Eero Alev (b. 1983) are studying painting at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Purtsak has participated in various joint exhibitions – “Let Me Breathe in My Own Way” (2018), “Common Dimension” (2019) and others.
Eero Alev has participated in several group exhibitions, at the Haapsalu City Gallery (“Common Dimension”, 2019) and the Estonian Art Museum (“Open Collections. The Artist Gets the Floor”, 2019). 

Holger Loodus (b. 1970) has graduated from the Department of Cultural Heritage and Conservation (BA, 2008) and the Department of Painting (MA, 2012) at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In 2012 Loodus was awarded the Young Artist Award. In 2018 he received the People’s Choice Award of the Köler Prize and the annual Award of the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and A. Le Coq.

Join us for the opening of the exhibition “Maintenance Is a Drag (It Takes All the Fucking Time)” on Tuesday, 28 January at 6 pm. The exhibition will remain open until 8 February, Tue-Sat 12-6 pm.

Benjamin Moua is a NYC-based designer, maker, and creative who strives to strike a balance between form, function, and the engineering of ideas into products and experiences that people will trust and love.​​ He has worked for major brands such as Reebok, Target, Adidas, Dick’s Sporting Goods, UNIQLO, Terramar Sports, New Balance and collaborated as a designer at the Boston Marathon, and the New York City Marathon.

His commitment to learning as both a professional and as a student, has allowed him the unique opportunity to stretch his interdisciplinary design experiences from Hardlines-to-Softlines goods, Color-to-Construction, Trend-to-Merchandising, and Print&Pattern-to-Production.

His uniquely expansive career, which started in fashion, has taken turns into consumable goods, high-performance protective gear, brand management, color theory/forecasting, and everything in between.

There are no projects too small or too big, and no questions left unturned, as he shares his insights on the key role designers serve as problem-solvers to the world’s unique creative challenges, and outlines why they are essential in addressing concepts such as ‘end-user experience’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘functional design’.

His lecture on the 31st January 2020 he will talk about identifying keys to success and will be a valuable experience for the students giving them insights and new perspectives in the world of design. 

Lecture will be about an hour long with a Q&A session after giving the audience a chance to learn the secrets of global fashion and accessories industry.

The experimental stop frame animation filmmaker Paul Bush will give three open lectures and will show his works next week from Wednesday to Friday in EKA.

Falling in Love with the Frame
On Wednesday, January 15th at 19:00-21:00 in EKA auditorium A101

“This talk will look at my passage from artist to experimental filmmaker and finally to animation director, and the pains and special pleasures of working frame by frame.”

The Art of Stupidity
On Thursday, January 16th at 17:30-18:30 in EKA room A302

“Pushkin wrote that poetry has to be a little bit stupid. On the eve of the UK leaving Europe this is the perfect moment to examine the British nation’s love of stupidity – for good or ill.”

In the Hinterland of Narrative
On Friday, January 17th at at 17:30-18:30 in EKA room A302

“An attempt to undermine all the rules for storytelling you may ever have heard and an exhortation to move into the unexplored territory of narrative.”

Paul Bush
Paul Bush is a filmmaker most well-known for experimental stop frame animation. He has made numerous short and medium length films including The Cows Drama (1984), His Comedy (1994), Rumour of True Things (1996), Furniture Poetry (1999), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (2001) and While Darwin Sleeps (2004). He has won many awards and his films have been shown in festivals, cinemas, galleries and on television all round the world. Last year he had retrospective programmes in Taiwan, Brussels, Madrid, Bucharest and Lisbon. He has directed commercials and his clients include Philips and National Panasonic. He has written four feature length screenplays one of which he directed and was released in UK cinemas to critical acclaim in 2013.

He began teaching film in 1981 and established a film workshop in South London. He taught on the visual arts course at Goldsmiths between 1995 and 2001 and at the National Film and Television School since 2003. Bush has lectured, run workshops and tutored at numerous art and film courses around the world including Harvard, Luzern University, Centro Sperimentali di Cinematografia in Italy and The Animation Workshop in Denmark.

“Bush is part scavenger, part inventor. Nothing is out of bounds and everything is worth trying. This is what makes Bush’s work so welcoming; you never know what you’re in for but you know it will be smart, funny, provocative and unique.” (Chris Robinson – Director, Ottawa International Animation Festival)

The lectures will be in English.

On 14th January 2020 at 15:00 you are welcome to the Estonian Academy of Arts’ assembly hall to join EKA Design Showcase – a public presentation of the freshest design projects made in collaboration with various enterprises.

Registrer here: forms.gle/f57Np17xGetoVTAP6
Event on Facebook: facebook.com/events/2613872371981428/

Concepts, prototypes and final results for innovative products and services will be presented, featuring new developments in the field of design. All enterprises, EKA’s present and future cooperation partners, and enthusiasts of innovative design are kindly invited to attend the event! The presentations will be given in English and the event will be in English.

Timeline:
15.00 Opening remarks by Kristjan Mändmaa (Dean of EKA Design) and Martin Pärn (Professor of Design at TalTech, Design & Technology Futures Head of Curriculum).

15.10 Linnar Viik – “Innovation – verb, not noun”

15.30 – 16.30 First block of presentations
– Smart Clothing for Moon Habitat. Swiss Space Center, Igluna 2020, D&TF
– Modular Clothing System for Lunar Habitat. Swiss Space Center, Igluna 2020, D&TF
– Mindful Listening in Spotify. Spotify + IxD
– TalTech Library: Advisory. TalTech Library + D&TF
– Re-thinking TalTech library. TalTech Library + D&TF
– Terve ruum /Healthy room. PERH + Product design
– Banners for Reidi tee promenade. Port of Tallinn + Graphic design
– Tallinn Pattern Buildings. Faculty of Architecture

16.30 – 16.50 Coffee break

16.50 – 18.15 Second block of presentations and closing remarks
_ Vessels for Transition, Exploring Circular Economy for Bolt. Bolt + IxD
– Aruna Clothing (India) + Fashion design
– Tvilum + D&TF
– More than a piece of furniture. Tvilum + D&TF
– Ruum. Tvilum + D&TF
– NOOK. Tvilum + D&TF
– “Nest of Emotions”. Porkuni school + glass/textile design
– Viimsi bus stops and gates. Viimsi county + Product design

The event will be funded by European Union Regional Fund.

The series of open lectures titled “International Inspiration”, co-organized by the Center for Contemporary Arts Estonia and the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture at the Estonian Academy of Arts, is proud to host our next guest, dr Anna Novikov.  On January 15th, she will give a lecture titled “Nation is the New Black: Patriotic Fashion and Performance in the Post-Communist States” at EKA, starting at 18:00 in the room A501. The lecture will focus on  the transnational revival of patriotic attire linked to patriotic performance that became fashionable in the Post-Communist states of Eastern-Central Europe and Central Asia in the last decade. Dr Novikov will examine visual and ideological links between media, dress, performance and the current development of patriotic fashion and performance in these areas.

The open lecture is followed by a seminar “”My Body is My Runestick and My Tattoos Tell My Story”: Performing Self-Barbarization in the Digital Age” held on January 16 in room A301, starting at 18:00. The seminar will focus on the broader trend in current popular culture of celebrating what the “civilized” Western cultural narrative has previously regarded as “barbarian”, and seeking to return to authenticity, albeit in reconstructed or borrowed forms.

Dr Anna Novikov, originally from Israel, lives and works in Greifswald in Germany, studying the broader sociopolitical context of fashion, including the recent rise in nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, and its impact on the issues of fashion and identity.

The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

On Monday, January 13th, the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture will host a research seminar “Technical Art History and Forgeries” by professor Hilkka Hiiop from the Department of Heritage Protection and Conservation, and Greta Koppel, curator at the Art Museum of Estonia, on the topic of contemporary technical research methods and their impact on the study of art history, as well as the issue of art forgeries.

See the roundtable discussion published in the cultural weekly Sirp.

Join us for the opening of the solo exhibition “Five Volumes” by Paul Kuimet on Friday, January 3 at 6 PM. The exhibition will remain open until January 25.

The exhibition, consisting of film projections, a slideshow, photos and an installation, was first exhibited at Narva Art Residency in 2018. In the accompanying catalogue, curator of the exhibition, Nico Anklam, explores the different meanings of the word volume – it can be a part of a series, the amplitude of sound, and, above all, a property of three-dimensional space: its capacity. The various meanings of the title and its subtleties open the contents of the works at a slow and meditative pace, similar to film projections.
Three 16 mm film projections depict the Pärnu KEK building complex, built in 1969. Golden Home (2017) deals with a block of flats forming part of the KEK complex, which according to Anklam “conjures two different eras and styles of architecture – Socialist and Capitalist – with their specific hopes and promises of advancement. Both seem, again, to be stuck in constant return. This motif slumbers already in the title of the exhibition: volume as a word derives from the Latin volvere – to roll or fold, and its recurrence, re-volvere informs the term revolution.”
Kuimet has been working with space since 2013. He is interested in the connection of architectural space to photography and film, and, in turn, their relationship to the architecture of exhibition space. He also pays great attention to the scenography and choreography of both the visitors and the artworks in the gallery. For Kuimet, the relocation of the exhibition content to a new space and context is important when presenting the works at EKA Gallery: “These five volumes or units, which were laid out in separate rooms in Narva and projected onto double-sided screens have been presented as a single volume at EKA Gallery. In Narva, Display for Optical C-Prints hosted two photographs, but at the current exhibition, it will be used as a kind of pavilion that contains all four projectors.”

Paul Kuimet (b. 1984) is an artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. His work has recently been exhibited and screened at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; European Central Bank, Frankfurt; KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn; WNTRP, Berlin and BOZAR Center for Fine Arts, Brussels. In 2018 he participated in the residency programme at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels and will take part in the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City.

www.paulkuimet.ee

Supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Muddis Brewery, A. Le Coq.

13 & Friday: Kraam’s closing party & lives
& 3rd year Graphic Art students’ Group exhibition “Soft Narratives”

Performing: Hello Killu, Riin Maide & Co fashion show, nostalgic costume drama “The Past. The way I recall It”  is an extension to Riin Maide’s  work currently on view at “Soft Narratives” group exhibition at Kraam artist-run space. A poetical-dramatic collective Las Cuervas Trágicas (Hanneleele and Kätlin Kaldmaa), and Lilli-Krõõt Repnau.

Exhibition “Soft Narratives” is open until December 29th.

** Photo: Killu Sukmit