The co-exhibition Present yet-to-be by Lisann Lillever, Johanna Ruukholm and Denisa Štefanigova will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Friday, December 17^th. Curator of the exhibition is Lilian Hiob.

When I was a young person I went to the university and I learned a rational language, to think with the left side of the brain. But in the right side of the brain you have intuition and imagination. Words are not the truth; they indicate the way to go, but you need to go alone, in silence. Symbols have a language that kills the words.

– Alejandro Jodorowsky

We form stories that could have happened and that can possibly happen. We play that today’s social order, existing rules and economic system are dislocated. The time axis is upside down – linearity as well as the growth and profit ideals are neglected. We recall the cultural layers from the past and allow sharpened sensations as well as stimulated imagination. We enjoy the affective charge that raises from the experience of existing as a human being while keeping in mind that human knowledge about the world is limited.

Is it possible to make a way and build ideas for transforming the ethical and political world if we’d take imagination, play and ability to value the unexpected excursions arising from errors next to our five senses and rational approach to living? How to reach ideas and acts that are not yet existing while the knowledge about the better state of things seems to be right here – in literature, art, philosophy.

The people, animals and other beings depicted on the artwork by Czech painter Denisa Štefanigova are intermingled, blended into each other, playful and without explicit plastic form. The artist has removed the dichotomy and opposition between the man and the animal, nature and technology, desire and anger, rational and emotional. Štefanigova has painted beings from various species who interact with each other while referring to possible forms of co-existence where the dominance of a man has been disregarded and cross-species cohabitation and understanding is the new reality. The artist’s work reflects  more consistent functioning where no living being is separated nor untouched from others – everyone is connected and related to each other, and the human being is not an exception. Philospher Donna Haraway has defined the abovementioned as „Chthulucene“ – that has been derived from the spider species Pimoa Cthulhu, a spider with extremely long legs. The eight legs seem to represent different points of view and possibilities yet are connected through their distinction and direction – none of the legs won’t function autonomously.

The sculptural installations and videos of the artist duo Lisann Lillevere and Johanna Ruukholm pursue the worldview of Chthulucene while mixing the cognitive orientation prevailing in contemporary society with archaic beliefs and behaviour. The artists aim at blurring the borders between existing meanings, interpretations, cognitive, personal and universal. In their artwork, Lillevere and Ruukholm refer to deep time and for human reason the length of such time is imperceptible – the artists show that the past and the present are inextricably intertwined and the connections are in constant state of flux. Perdition and recreation build new opportunities for reinterpretation and hope. This is a play with fantasy where existing social and ideological beliefs, linear perception of time as well as targeted growth and profit have been neglected.

The artists take a look at forgotten spaces, envision new corners and openings, navigate on the verge of principles, give a chance to mistakes, pleasures and unusual while flirting and intermingling with the present day, pop culture and current issues.

Sound of the video work by Johanna Ruukholm and Lisann Lillevere: Nathan Tulve, narrator: Hannaliisa Uusma, text: Lisann Lillevere, HU (Hannaliisa Uusma and Leslie Laasner), video effects: Jakob Tulve

Installation Traction has been completed in collaboration with Joonas Timmi.

Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The artists express their gratitude to: department of ceramics at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Maie Ruukholm, Allan Aug, Maria Helen Känd, Jaana Kormašov, Martina Gofman, Joonas Timmi, Merili Põllu, Marika Henriksson, Synlab Eesti Ltd., Uku-Kristjan Küttis, Leili Lillevere, Aivar Lillevere, Hannaliisa Uusma, Taavi-Peeter Liiv, Kristiina R.

Exhibition will be open until January 10, 2022.

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

The co-exhibition The A. B. C. D. E. F. G of Love by Marge Moko and Maruša Sagadin will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Thursday, January 13th. The exhibition will remain open until February 7 th.

An exhibition is a point on a continuum.

The lives of objects—and artists—precede and follow individual events. That solid-state matter continuously self-chronicles with chemical technology preceding any digital blockchain. Their confluence and your coexistence distinguish this moment. We stand where a collective flow of mortal forms beget flickers of mechanical joys.

The personal and professional dialogue of Marge and Maruša before this moment may be invisible to you. But it’s tangible. What you see, comes from months. What you don’t, comes from years.

Describing one artist’s practice as photographic and the other’s as architectural merely skims the facts. A loose reading of their biographies defaults anyone to this conclusion. Left under-described are emotion and intent. Both artists embody honesty, sincerity, and empathy as individuals and through their chosen profession. In their first collaboration in a long relationship, their work synthesizes this extant energy.

You are amongst an assembly of characters. Marge and Maruša gave them names, but these characters invited you in. Juliana asks you to sit, Saša beckons you nearer. Lucy grants power, Marička elicits introspection.

Their names represent a catalogue of personalities. They preside over an alphabet of love. Every letter standing for a gift of self you’ll be proud to stand behind. And this is only the beginning.

Text by JL Murtaugh

JL Murtaugh founded the contemporary art platform Syndicate and is the director of Autarkia (Vilnius LT). He was born in Chicago and lives in Vilnius.

Graphic design by Kersti Heile and Indrek Sirkel.

The artist’s gratitude goes to: Raivo Plado (Plado Art Tranport), Anne-Liis Hunt (Overall), Marko Usler (Artsmart), Villem Säre.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Austrian Federal Council.
Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

The co-exhibition A Visitor by Eero Alev, Marleen Suvi and Brenda Purtsak will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Thursday, February 10, 2022. Exhibition will stay open until March 7, 2022.

I don’t know what it feels to be dead, said a six-year-old girl to her father once. Her father listened, pondered, and remembered – neither did he know, but he yearned to. First, these twenty something thousand days given to us seem to last forever, but the more one moves along the axis, the days grow considerably shorter. We have a beginning and we have an end. Our visiting hours are limited and at some point, even without knowing it, we will leave all this behind. What did we find? Were we searching for something at all? How much did we ask and what did we give?

We arrive from somewhere we remember nothing about, and we are going somewhere we know nothing about.

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

Jass Kaselaan‘s personal exhibition Monster Follows the Sheep Carrier will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Thursday, March 10, 2022. Exhibition will stay open until April 4, 2022.

Jass Kaselaan: „Monster following the sheep carrier (the good shepherd) is an inevitability, a logical chain of cause and effect, natural and inescapable course of events. Current exhibition focuses on modeling of the resonation of pray-predator system and on creating a simulation. An important aspect here is both qualitative and quantitative analysis, evaluation and mapping of animated worlds as well as optimizing/organizing of these maps. Filtrating, designing and transforming of imported data. An attempt to make the unfathomable perceivable at least to some extent – to mark the indication about the deceptive state of free will.

Two mosaic murals and five sculptural objects are exhibited in Hobusepea gallery.“

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

Tanel Rander‘s personal exhibition Angelus Novus will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Wednesday, April 6, 2022. Exhibition will stay open until May 2, 2022.

Tanel Rander: “Angelus Novus means that storm is blowing and the angel of history cannot close her wings. We are all watching her fading into the unknown future, with her eyes still nailed to the past.

This exhibition is an insight to my creative sources that I used to suppress and neglect, while being focused on the outside world and its conventions. In the same time these sources were always supporting me, carrying me.

We have built a pump house on our sources. And seen from that house every source is a resource. An instrument for something. Last year I wrote an article about this: “When Turbines Rotate, while Water Stands Still”. The article opens the context a bit and is available here: https://sirp.ee/s1-artiklid/c6-kunst/kui-turbiinid-poorlevad-aga-vesi-seisab/

Not all the exhibited artworks come from my personal creative process. There are also some from my work with people with special needs that I have occasionally done during the recent years. So, this exhibition also includes contributions from Sirli, who I worked with in last winter. Her drawings hold a lot of radiating energy. Oil pastels quickly run short in her hands and drawing is a highly intensive process for her. It heals her mood and seems to protect her from something. My work with her was simply about drawing together. Neither of us had never studied drawing or painting. But we were drawing and we were painting. And it had good influence on us.

The central point of this exhibition is a personal symbol of my own. It was waiting for more than 10 years until I decided to show it in public. But then a heavy storm started to blow and my works that were mere abstractions, something that I had used mostly for myself, got exposed to it. Such storms can also be seen as teeth of time that crack all meanings that have been nailed to temporality and eat everything that is up to date. I will see what will be left of these works. The only sail in this storm that I have consciously hoisted is Angelus Novus – the fading angel of history, carried away by the wind.

I thank everyone who has supported me on my journey. Regarding this exhibition, Jelena Jokic Grobler played a very important role in helping me with means of psychodrama and art therapy. In latest times I was also influenced by Borut Holland, with who I shared some wonderous coincidences. I also thank people from Kärdla social centre, I thank Estonian Cultural Endowment and MTÜ Sada Paplit for supporting this exhibition and I also thank the people of Art Smart for being dedicated to their work.”

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

Tim Høibjerg, Siiri Jüris and Triin Marts will open their exhibition Then the Edge Asserts Itself in Hobusepea gallery on Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 18.00. Curator of the exhibition is Anne Vigeland. Exhibition will stay open until May 30, 2022.

Then the Edge Asserts Itself, which takes its title from Anne Carson’s book Eros the Bittersweet (1986), is a group exhibition that looks towards the complexities of human desire and emotional interaction. The exhibited artists share a common interest in corporal experiences – in the body as archive, material, landscape, haven. Through painting, sculpture, video, and installation, they explore what it means to be alone and together in a distressed and desolate world, with a particular attention towards the powers of touch, memory, and intimacy. In dialogue with each other and the materials and traditions that govern their work, they address how desire forms selfhood, how it makes and breaks us, and the abiding struggle to soften the edges of doubt.

The exhibition is supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Nordic Culture Point and Galleri Duerr.
Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

Riin Maide will open her personal exhibition It’s Like I Barely See in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on Wednesday, June 1st, 2022. Exhibition will be open until June 27, 2022.

Windows covered by transparent plastic and scaffolding are normally the signs of something new or fresh arriving soon in an urban environment. Similarly to curtains, these elements denote certain anticipation and will be forgotten when they open up new views.

It’s Like I Barely See is pays homage to forgotten architecture. While depicting fragile phenomena in urban space, such as framework and construction, the artist attempts to stretch the temporary into something endless.

The artist expresses her gratitude to: Rain Kilkson, Cristo Madissoo, EKA graafika osakond.
Photos: Anna MAri Liivrand ja Roman-Sten Tõnissoo

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.

Towards Atmosperic Care, a research collaborative between Hanna Husberg and Agata Marzecova, will open their exhibition From Aurora to Geospace in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on Thursday, June 30, 2022. Exhibition will be open until July 24, 2022.

How do we depict something? Not only in artistic contexts but also in more scientific, more enlightening context? How do we agree on what is aurora and what is not?

From Aurora to Geospace explores how historical interest in visible atmospheric phenomena, notably the aurora borealis or northern lights, has contributed to the uncovering of invisible processes and regions of near-Earth space (also called geospace) that are made perceptible only with the help of science. Rather than observing atmospheric phenomena as such, the installation looks at the instruments, historical circumstances, events and ideas that make atmospheric processes visible and thereby contribute to the construction of novel atmospheric imaginaries and sensibilities. Scientifically, the auroral phenomenon can be described as the coming together of forces from the Earth’s magnetosphere, the ionosphere (the region 70 km and above the Earth’s surface) and the sun’s particles. Irregularities in the ionosphere, also known as space weather, produce auroras and similarly affect radio, communication and navigation systems.

Due to low solar activity there were very little auroral events during the medieval period, and in 1707, after an absence of more than a hundred years, great spectacles of auroras reappeared. Auroral displays were visible as far south as France and Italy, at latitudes where no-one had seen aurora before. It was the beginning of the Enlightenment, and auroras were in the spotlight of knowledge production. This also drew attention to the arctic Fennoscandian territories, which during the last centuries have became one of the most important natural laboratories for conducting scientific research on the functioning of the atmosphere as well as the whole geosphere, and therefore also as a place where global atmospheric imaginaries are shaped. Today, the region hosts the ionospheric radar EISCAT infrastructure (the second largest European research project after the Hadron Collider) which studies the ionosphere as well as auroral phenomena by transmitting and receiving signals between large antennas and facilities located in Sodankylä, Kiruna, Tromsö and Kilpisjärvi.

Thanks to the conceptual tools of ionospheric science (to which facilities and places such as EISCAT contribute), planet Earth is no longer an isolated Blue Marble in the dark vacuum of outer space. Instead, it can be understood as energetically and materially interconnected with its galactic environment. However, such planetary sensibility is not simply accessible through human senses and embodied experience. Rather, it is dependent on technoscientific infrastructures and expertise only made possible through the entanglements of science, militarisation, commercialisation and the datafication of nature. In this light, we ask how to meaningfully consider, and care for, the representational, yet material sphere between what is perceptible and imaginable, and the outer space that, while difficult to comprehend, is permeated with satellites, and other technologies and environmental processes that condition our lives?
Combining photography, historical and scientific imagery, drawing, sound and text, From Aurora to Geospace approaches auroras as an access point to the upper atmosphere. It draws on conversations with scientists and researchers encountered during field trips to the ionospheric radar EISCAT infrastructures and their surroundings, and uses academic and historical sources as well as scientific materials brought up by the people we met, such as the prevalence of diagrams for shaping how we imagine vast, yet invisible, environments out of reach for the human senses. Situated and embodied understandings of science as always historically grounded, partial and never perfectly objective do not trivialize nor diminish the importance of scientific evidence, instead they create opportunity for engagement. In line with this, the different elements of the installation are organized as a fragmentary vocabulary, or clavis, providing some keys for interpretation without presupposing hierarchical relations between the scientific, aesthetic, historical and political.

Towards Atmospheric Care is a long-term research collaborative between Stockholm-based visual artist Hanna Husberg and Tallinn-based interdisciplinary researcher Agata Marzecova which explores air as a naturalcultural phenomenon situated in the nexus of media, science and technological mediation. Using installation, performance, writing and critical analysis, the project examines the overlapping boundaries between the aesthetic, science and politics of air and atmosphere. In addition to artistic and academic outcomes, the duo advances interdisciplinary pedagogic approaches, including joint teaching at the Estonian Academy of Arts as well as co-learning workshops (Heavens Field_Notes, 2019; Fantasies of Seamless Interoperability, 2021; How to care for air? Thinking lab, 2022). Their collaboration has been supported by the Technosphere Campus (HKW Berlin, 2016), The Seed Box (Mistra-Formas Collaboratory, 2017), the Bernadotte Fellowship (Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, 2019-20), Kone Foundation (2020-22), and several residencies.

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

Andres Koort will open his personal exhibition Chaos and Order in Hobusepea gallery at 18:00 on Wednesday, July 27th, 2022. Exhibition will be open until August 22nd, 2022.

The title Chaos and Order refers to the two opposite forces and the motion between these two states. Etymologically, the word „chaos“ is related to Greek verb „χαίνω“ that denoted the yawning emptiness, void, gap. This is the initial existence of non-existence of things; a state consisting of a potential, a yearning for getting structured. This is the commencement phase of things charged with pure energy, the birth moment of all things. Also, exact sciences study the essence of „chaos“. According to the theory of chaos, there are a systematic ground structure, constant feedback, repetitions, self-resemblance, fractals and self-organization behind the seemingly random behaviour of chaotic complex system.

Andres Koort focuses on chaos and order in his artwork, whilst working with repetitions, self-resemblance, self-organization and the metaphor of butterfly effect according to which a tiny change in one state can result in large differences in a later state.

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

Kai Kaljo will open her personal exhibition Pile of Dirty Rags in Hobusepea gallery at 18:00 on Wednesday, August 24, 2022. Exhibition will be open until September 19, 2022.

„In February 2022, I created a folder Explosions and volcanoes in my computer. Actually, I had had it already for a year since I added there my first image.

After a few weeks, they suddenly started to kill people in the next room.
And then I realized that actually there has always been a war, peace is just a break between wars. These are the rules of life. And you know nothing of these.
My eyes were opening, I suddenly started to look at my home with a completely different gaze. I was amazed how many items I have that bear recollections about killing and war: drawings by Andrus Johan, silver jewellery from Afghanistan, a Kuznetsov porcelain plate that my grandmother brought with her when she left St. Petersburg in 1918, a book signed by Gustav Suits. Even my house has been rebuild on the very spot it was once bombed.

In April I took the first pictures as well, even if this first seemed an impossible effort.

Two flowers: the first one reminding of a burnt corpse that has still some blood in the biggest blood vessel. I once worked at a forensic medical lab and the acquired skills suddenly started to reappear. The other flower has a window behind it, with the view of an exploding atomic bomb.

Pictures I never took but that were inside and around me all the time: a dog eating a man. A man eating a dog. Pieces of human bodies, corpses packed in plastic bags, fields covered with graves, the only thing that will be left of you is a pile of dirty rags …”.

Kai Kaljo

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

Kert Viiart will open his solo exhibition As It Came Out of The Earth, It Returns in Hobusepea gallery at 17:00 on Friday, September 23rd, 2022. The exhibition will be open until October 17th, 2022.

According to the artist, one can presume that the future in plastic ruins will arrive unexpectedly; however, the dystopian narrative has become almost an inevitable part of the future of our planet; creating unimaginable landscapes. Nondegradable plastic waste will be unavoidable part of the history of humankind. Perhaps instead of the achievements of certain civilizations, the future archaeology will tell about the dystopian results of civilization and humankind.
Through daily consumption and comfort habits, humankind creates new geological strata and future artifacts. Every year, almost 300 million tons of plastic waste is produced all around the world – but in order to handle all this, there is a lack of the necessary infrastructure as well as the economical and political will. The fact that plastic won’t degrade but “travels” through hundreds of years is intriguing me to treat the material from the archaeological perspective, as a part of the practice of future archaeology. At the current moment, plastic already has a huge role in the field of archaeology. In museums, plastic is used for presenting and preserving archaeological objects. A visit to the museum of archaeology may have the effect of a foretelling from the future. Plastic as a material is used in several different forms in order to narrate and present the history of ancient civilizations. We can only speculate what kind of afterlife the remains will have in case something drastic happened with the collections. One of the appalling examples is the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro. On September 2nd, 2018 the oldest and most important museum of archaeology and science in Brazil was ruined in fire. It is estimated that 92,5% of the 20 million objects in the museum collection were destroyed. Numerous forest and landscape fires that took place in 2019 and that have increased during the past years, make me think about the dystopian future scenarios. What kind of landscape is being created by these fires when the plastic things and construction materials will melt into one with the ground while forming new landscapes and leaving the surface made of plastiglomerate rocks for the future generations?

While studying and speculating around these themes, Kert Viiart has created the installation As It Came Out of The Earth, It Returns (2019–2022) that includes sculptural forms and video work with sound (5’46’’). Through the installation, the artist observes contemporary archaeological expositions, plastic-based support structures, and construction materials while doubting the choices made when selecting the materials. These hybrid objects are joint images including both imagination as well as the material reality that create a speculative view to the future archaeology. The objects have “traveled” through time and deformed, while becoming a part of the ground and acquiring value and archaeological meaning.
The installation combines various materials, including glay, epoxy resin, found plastic construction materials, leftover plexiglass, found plastic waste and soil.

Dialoguepartner and technical help: Kristina Õllek
Thanks: Hanna Laura Kaljo, Mijke van der Drift, Ruben Pater, Linda van Deursen, Federico Campagna, Niels Schrader, Roosje Klap, Tiiu Saadoja, Art Museum of Estonia and KABK master’s program Non Linear Narratives.

Photos: Kristina Õllek

The 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.

TASE’21 and EAA (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 achaic 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!”

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.

Mall Paris‘s personal exhibition Infinity will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Wednesday, December 16, 2020. Exhibition will stay open until January 11, 2021.

Word —- image —- imagination. Either every word separately or together as a line. The space fades into a complete idea or single images …

Words compose an image or an attempt appearing in time.
Infinity is far
or close
Infinity is close
or
far …

Sympathy for certain arrangement yet infinity that is letting go, drifting away …

Infinity is far
or close
Infinity is close
or
far …

following as a shadow …

Mall Paris

According to the artist, her current exhibition is a conceptual continuation to her previous exhibition Word held in Vabaduse gallery in 2019. Art historian Juta Kivimäe has stated that Mall Paris is one of the purest practitioners of abstract and minimalist painting in Estonian art. Paris’s painted imagery is close to a geometric approach but also including almost always something else, something undefinable. Her artwork has traces of minimalism and poetical arte povera. In her emphatic way, Paris poeticizes way of living and art that has grown out of the most scarce means; and yet, her paintings express the most exquisite features of the art of painting. Tamara Luuk, curator of the Tallinn Art Hall, has characterized Mall Paris as a silent and consistent artist who is always present; and who in her creative practice is steadfast and uniquely elegant. Paris’s work has been led by the seriality of minimalist paintings where the recurrence of an image has simultaneously a maddening effect as well as caressing the viewer’s eye with its pulsating multitude of nuances.

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.

Joint exhibition Parasitic Symbiosis by Pille-Riin Jaik and Miriam Esther Meyer will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Thursday, February 4, 2021. Exhibition will stay open until February 22, 2021.

With Parasitic Symbiosis Pille-Riin Jaik (EE) and Miriam Esther Meyer (DK/MX) try to investigate expected collaborative behavioral patterns, rivalry, modernistic thought models as well as frames and materials, while considering both what would benefit themselves and the exhibition as a whole. The terms parasitic and symbiosis may appear paradoxical, but were chosen consciously to include both the give and take of the overall process and outcome. Did they successfully create a balance between seeking harmony and maintaining two autonomous viewpoints? That remains an open-ended question.

For Meyer Parasitic Symbiosis presented an opportunity to free herself from restrictive working conditions and develop an awareness of what she can compromise on before the result becomes stifling. “For me, this journey has not been a straight-forward trajectory. The plan was to challenge the conditions of my performative drawing concept Dependency Action Documentation – a concept that I realized was less of a co-dependency and more a self-destructive reliance on my part as well as one with limited creative possibilities – in the hope of developing a healthier process and outcome. That happened in phases – five to be exact – each of them involving having to overcome new obstacles that presented themselves along the way. Some of those obstacles were specifically related to the collaborative nature of this exhibition and some would have arisen, regardless of context. The result is Dependency Action Liberation, which includes the presentation of my original hypothesis and premise, a description of the different development stages and a conclusion, reflecting the overall take-away, as well as three paintings, sealed in latex. I think the works can be approached in different ways, but for me, the personal impact has been greater than expected. Somehow the conscious choices I had to make have made me more aware, and I hope that that is somehow conveyed in the works – if nothing else, in an abstract way,” she says.

For Jaik it means questioning how radical transparency would look like in the artworld: “We all have stolen something from someone, even if it’s from history. There can be such a thing as ethical stealing though, in my opinion. A kind of stealing that can make things grow. Subconscious stealing, for example, when you admire someone’s work or are exposed to it frequently. It could also be ideas that are close to your heart that you feel need to be elaborated on. Parasitical Symbiosis is made from such thoughts and attempts; questioning the myth of single-minded genius and its habitat, the White Cube. In my installations I try to show how I am never able to fully work alone. Each of my artworks depend on someone else’s talent and in some cases, someone else’s work may be the reason for their formation in the first place. For example, in the double installation “So, I weed” and “So, I weed & I weed” I dug into an archive at the art academy of Vienna and translated the findings into vegetation – oppressive weeds, boring bureaucratic grass and a hidden, nonexistent rose (women’s letters to demand right for education that were excluded from the archive). I try to question the ground I stand on, my own soil and with what limitations and preset patterns one is allowed to grow.”

In 2018, she and Pille-Riin Jaik collaborated on the work Moving Body in Aggressive Motion, which was shortlisted for the Jury Award and streamed at Frauen Filmfestival 2018 in Vienna, Austria. Parasitic Symbiosis will be the second collaborative effort between Jaik and Meyer.

The artist’s gratitude goes to: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Austrian Embassy in Tallinn, Gerda Nurk, Irmeli Terras, Martti Toivar, Mari-Liis Jaik.

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.

Joint exhibition Spring Express by Ann Pajuväli and Misa Asanuma will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Thursday, February 25, 2021. Exhibition will stay open until March 15, 2021.

By weaving together drawing, ceramic, concrete products and found objects, the exposition constructs a wandering narrative about the longing to be elsewhere and creating fictional worlds into your everyday. The exhibition invites you to a swift sensory journey, in which a comforting familiarity that comes with previously perceived objects and phenomena is mixed with playful scenes of imagination.

☆

Where do you go when days blend into one, when nostrils are longing for spring?
Where do you go when slipping into reverie?
cutting through bushes
sticking to the path
going by curves and angles
muddy diagonals on sprouting grass

Ann Pajuväli

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

Urmas Lüüs‘s personal exhibition Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Thursday, May 20th, 2021. Exhibition will be open until June 7th, 2021.

Urmas Lüüs: „After my grandmother’s death I started to empty her apartment before the renovation works – 83 years of life piled up in front of me. In three summer months, I was able to dig through hardly half of the layers imbued by a human spirit. The pile included a coat hanger secured by a wooden stick and a band aid; a dress made of a curtain; mended socks; a patched oilcloth. There were some kind of knowledge and presence in all of these things. I gathered that I was able to read this knowledge more and more every day. When I discovered a shelf full of crocheted and embroidered doilies, I got the feeling that I was the one who had to continue with the tools I also found there. So I learned from what was there in front of me and gradually my skills improved. Soon I was able to read the stitches and tracing patterns just like a musician reading sheet music. It seems that the gap between two worlds was not an obstacle for communication.

A few words about myself – my name is Urmas Lüüs (b. 1987) and I have obtained BA and MA degrees in blacksmithing at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In my artistic practice I combine various media such as video, performance, conceptually charged everyday objects, photography, sculpture and sound. I work in my studio at 2 Hobusepea Str, Tallinn; supervise students at the Estonian Academy of Arts and in Gothenburg University; write about culture for different publications; and participate in a sound art group Postinstrumentum.“

Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Estonian Academy of Arts.

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

Margit Säde will open her personal exhibition Zone d’attente in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on Wednesday, June 9th, 2021. Exhibition will be open until July 5th, 2021.

Margit Säde: “Due to my work, I have commuted between Tallinn and Zürich for the last ten years. During the past three years, I have been flying on 65 days, taken off and landed 138 times in total. My flights have been delayed, cancelled, changed, overbooked. I have been flying in an almost empty airplane, with bad weather, with good weather, during the pandemic.

Flying is more sterile and more effective than daily life – and all services are within a short walk or a touch away. And yet, flying is always accompanied by a controversial feeling – there is a desire to both ignore and celebrate the control. I am flying into the sky while being safely chained to my seat. Where some people see an open sky, others witness a framed view of sea with the dimensions of a standard airplane window. While pushing my nose to the tightly closed, cold window I activate the airplane mode on my smartphone and enter the time-free zone of flying. The zone of anticipation is just like a closed circle where there is no past and the future has not started yet – there is only a present in a vacuum. It is similar to the phase in depression when the worst is over but the person has not recovered yet. This is a vague indication about the state where you happen to be at the moment and where you are going to be soon – the moment when your life and everything you desire to do is put on hold. Just like the airplanes circling above the airport, waiting for the moment to land.”

Supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The artist’s gratitude to: Urs and August Säde Lehni, Anna Škodenko, Eleonore de Montesquiou, Lightmaker, Tuul and Tallinn Secondary School of Science.

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

Hedi Jaansoo will open her personal exhibition Sweet Peas, Snapdragons and Forget Me Not in Hobusepea gallery at 5pm on Thursday, July 8th, 2021. Exhibition will be open until August 2nd, 2021.

Hedi Jaansoo: “I have photographed half-dried cut flowers. I have depicted these with myself, with the wall, with my granny. I have glued the pieces of pictures together and photographed these with more or less fresh flowers, notes, walls and vases. I have pressed wrinkles into the clay. I have braided scarves. I’d like to be like a snapdragon, symbolizing the strength of women. I’d like to polish my nails again, but afterwards I have to take it off, and I have no time, and then these remain longer in a half-polished state. Like flowers in a vase, lasting much longer when half-dried than fresh. I’d like to say there’s no need to press yourself together, because it won’t help.

The beautiful nymph Paeonia once caught the eye of Apollo. However, Paeonia turned self-conscious and blushed as she noticed that Aphrodite had observed their flirtation. Aphrodite got angry and turned Paeonia into a red peony.

During the Victorian era, people sent each other little flower arrangements to express feelings that was considered a social taboo. Flower dictionaries were used in order to decode the talking bouquets. One of the most popular dictionaries of this kind is “Language of Flowers” (Routledge, 1884, illustrated by Kate Greenaway, a book with numerous reprints). So, during the Victorian era, one had to speak literally through flowers about things that were prohibited.

And they say you should not let peonies wither, because it will bring bad luck.

I’d like to be like a snapdragon.”

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
The exhibitions in Hobusepea Gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

The exhibition Tactilite: Stone that Tickles the Gaze by jewellery artist Darja Popolitova will open in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on August 5th Hobusepea gallery. The solo show incorporates five video works, jewellery and installations that will create a fictional world where witch Seraphita helps to cope with the frustrations of everyday life.

“Seraphita is a fictional character who helps me to expand the usual functions of jewellery. For example, to shoot jewellery so that the viewer would be much more interested in watching a video clip rather than a stand-alone artifact attached to the stand,” says the author.

The video tutorials and jewellery tools in the exhibition are tailored to the specific needs of people – either for becoming more self-confident for some, bringing lost intimacy into life or coping with aggression for others.

The artist considers materiality not only as a physical component but also as a digital one. The action performed by witch Seraphita on the screen becomes a “ritual” involving corporeality. Without such powerful wearable symbols as jewellery, human life would not have sentimental values — gift-giving rituals, tactile moments, personal memories.

Darja’s works have been published in local and international media. Kelly Riggs, a contemporary critic and curator, writes about Darja’s work in the Dutch art magazine Current Obsession:
“Though the physical jewellery objects are the crux of what Popolitova creates, they are also just a part of the total picture, or the collective persona she presents when she shares that jewellery online.”

The exhibition can be visited from 4th to 30th of August 2021, every day (except Tuesday) 11:00-18:00.
Gallery address: Hobusepea 2, Tallinn.

The exhibition has been completed in collaboration with Jakob Tulve (VFX) and Andres Nõlvak (sound).

Artists’s gratude goes to: Aleksandr Popolitov ja Nadežda Popolitova, Ando Naulainen, Anastasia Dratšova, Eesti Kunstiakadeemia doktorikool, Eesti Kunstiakadeemia ehte- ja sepakunstiosakond, Eesti Kunstnikeliit, Elnara Taidre, Karl Kivinurm, Norman Orro, Kadi Veesaar, Kadri Mälk, Karmo Järv, Keiu Krikmann, Kristo Pachel, Miikael Danieljants, Pire Sova, Raivo Kelomees.

Sponsors: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Moe OÜ, Õllenaut OÜ, Hobusepea gallery, Orbital Vox Studios.
Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

Laivi‘s personal exhibition Collecting and Preserving will be opened in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on Thursday, September 2nd, 2021. Exhibition will be open until September 20th, 2021.

Collecting and Preserving is a fashion exhibition about business and art, posing the question whether the only solution for helping the society suffering from crises would be a political one?

The basis for the coping mechanism in our society is petroleum that has emerged from the organic substance deposited either in the seabed or underground 300 million years ago. What kind of material for the future we are creating with today’s sediments?

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.

Katrin Koskaru‘s personal exhibition Engine Noise from the Sun will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Friday, September 24th, 2021. Exhibition will be open until October 11, 2021.

„The sky above Annelinn district was thick with noise. Especially at night. The daytime sky was cheerful, full of colourful parachutes. Sports in the sky involves military objectives, and that is a well-known fact. Tu-16K, followed by Tu-22M3, Tu-4D and the colourful, bright Il-76MD. Some of the Il-76MD models were in Aeroflot’s colours and armed with automatic guns, and in Aeroflot’s colours, but armed with automatic guns and equipped against the ground-to-air and ground-to-air rockets. Helena? An arm’s length to the right from the gray cloud! Diligent exercises for observing airplanes, considerations, considerations, diligent exercises may vastly decrease the time spent on searching for an airplane. An airplane can appear in upper layers. A thumb’s length to the right from the church tower. Only silence can be heard. To understand, to understand that you have to run. Riddle me, riddle me! It is neither fast nor slow, it is loud but one can hear it only in silence, in one’s body, inside one’s head. First in one ear – a phantom; then in the other ear – deception, a whistle, battle scenes. From somewhere inside, from the head. Sound waves that keep gathering and gathering, until the body escapes the sound waves, the body starts to move faster, the speed should be at least 343 metres per second, 343 seconds through sound waves, diligent exercises take the body quickly through with a blast. There won’t be a blast without the movement of the body of one’s individual type. The body escapes the sound waves and the spiders started to weave a huge fabric for the body, a robe stronger than steel, but too slowly, so that goats were taken to help out, but even they turned out to be too slow and did not achieve the desired results. Helena was found in her room at home, weaving a purple carpet, enormously big, consisting two wide parts where battles have been beautifully knitted inside.“

Katrin Koskaru

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

Kristen Rästas‘s personal exhibition The Caretaker will be opened in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on Thursday, October 14, 2021. Exhibition will be open until November 1^st, 2021.

At his present exhibition, Kristen Rästas presents a VR artwork The Caretaker and sculptural landscapes which have been inspired by the visual forms of the main artwork. The fictional character, the Caretaker, has been named after its figurative position as the creator of the environment. The virtual, eternal landscape is something that the Caretaker tries to design according to the memories of the real world. The empirical journey tells about the desire to preserve and improve the surrounding, increasingly fragile and perceptible environments, while creating artificial visual out of the same environments. And sometimes, these may seem much more ideal and inviting than the real environment. The monologue that is made of the Caretaker’s memories, is slightly nostalgic and related to the surrounding landscape. The repetitiousness of audio clips, motionlessness of the environment and the interactive flying ability of the artwork viewer create an uncanny medium as a primary emotion through recognition of natural environment. One cannot be quite sure whether the viewer has been put in the Caretaker’s role or has the viewer been taken to a virtual-archeological exposition in the memories of someone unknown that at the same time have the effect of a collective memory while depicting universal natural forms and textures. Through his artwork, Kristen Rästas presents his vision about creating completely new artificial environments and contemporary landscape image as well as the various ways to experience and interpret these environments.

In order to achieve the maximum experience, the interactive virtual artwork needs to be viewed with VR headset and the viewer has to use the remote control. There is a 3D-world that the viewer can discover while hauntingly flying around on his or her own. It is a free platform without a linear beginning and an end. Every viewer continues where the last viewer has left his or her experience.

Artist’s gratitude to: Kelli Gedvil, Kennet Lekko, Simon Dalzell, Ian-Simon Märjama.

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

Uno Roosvalt‘s anniversary exhibition My Studio will be opened in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on Wednesday, November 3^rd, 2021. Exhibition will be open until November 22, 2021.

Uno Roosvalt turned 80 in August this year. Current exhibition comprising Roosvalt’s drawings is one way to celebrate this important landmark in the artist’s life. Uno tends to lead his life with a modest flow – and his loving gaze accompanies the various subjects of his artwork, whether it be Nordic nature, coastal landscapes, evergreen bushes or cats and dogs. And there have always been cats and dogs in the Roosvalt family’s home.

Artist’s studio is an artist’s home. It is the birthplace of the artist’s artwork. Even when the works leave the studio, there will be a memory of the space in the artworks as the space in the artist’s head where the creative ideas were born. Yearning for one’s studio is a part of every artwork’s charm. An artist needs a studio – it is a place where artists keep their tools, a place they can leave and return. Uno Roosvalt’s studio is located in Maarjamäe district, Tallinn. It is on the first floor of his home. A narrow staircase leads upstairs, and there are many artworks hanging on the walls (including those by Estonian art classics Eerik Haamer, Johannes Võerahansu, Evald Okas; and Uno Roosvalt’s contemporaries Marju Mutsu and Naima Neidre), including the artist’s own works from the earlier years of his artist’s practice.

The studio is old, Uno Roosvalt has worked here for many years. Despite its small size, the studio has no suffocating effect. All the paintings and drawings surrounding you in the studio seem to be like openings to the worlds that offer more space and expanse for being: coastal landscapes, views to the cliffs and from the cliffs in Iceland, Gotland, Åland; Estonian coasts with junipers, megaliths, boat wrecks, heaps of fishing nets, glass buoys. Even if the artist depicts people or an animal, there is always some open view in the background, whether some kind of landscape or a window overlooking the garden. Uno Roosvalt’s studio is like a space with numerous windows.

His newest series of drawings „My Studio“ has been completed in 2021 and has inspired the artist to give the exhibition the same title. The series depicts views of Roosvalt’s studio, including the things surrounding him every day, drawings and paintings. With his new series, the artist takes a retrospective approach while referring and quoting his own earlier artwork. Roosvalt has used similar quoting method before – for instance, in his drawing series exhibited in Draakon gallery in 2018 where the artist entertained himself with the familiar images known from Eduard Wiiralt’s graphic prints.

The warm humour on these drawings has been replaced by silent contemplation. One can see much more depicted than the artworks in Roosvalt’s studio. The studio is an artist’s real home and therefore Roosvalt has been also attracted by the themes of Jesus Christ, stories of his sufferings and the messages of joy. Uno Roosvalt’s father, church minister Albert Roosvalt, served in St. Lawrence Church in Kuusalu; and Uno Roosvalt’s mother (maiden name Liidia Volmer) graduated from the Tallinn Industrial Art School. The intellectual environment in his home has influenced Uno Roosvalt when growing up and becoming an artist, on a somewhat very elementary, essential level.

Uno Roosvalt’s studio is located on the upper floor of his home; the series „My Studio“ is exhibited on the main floor of Hobusepea gallery. When going downstairs to the lower ground of the gallery – a space that could refer to subconsciousness and the hidden – one can see heaps of nails. The series of drawings „Coast of Nails“ has been completed in 2012–2013. Nails follow the shapes appearing in nature – views to the sea horizon or meadows that have been always characteristic to Roosvalt’s work. Nails penetrate the entire earthly existence  and our surroundings, whether from the crucifix or the firewood burnt to ash in the oven. These are the parts of Uno Roosvalt’s artist’s world, designiting both the earthly and the mental plane.

Sirja-Liisa Eelma

Curator of the exhibition: Sirja-Liisa Eelma.

Design: Kaarel Eelma.

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.

Kaisa Maasik‘s personal exhibition Blow Hot and Cold will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Wednesday, November 24. Exhibition will be open until December 13, 2021.

The saying „blow hot and cold“ expresses ambivalence, alternating between two states. In her artwork presented at the current exhibition, Kaisa Maasik examines depicting of (alternation of) emotions.

When it comes to languages, expressions about moods tend to involve opposite colours: for instance the saying „see red“ means the same as „turn blue with anger“ in Estonian, and yet, in both languages, one becomes „green with envy“. Various studies have also proved that human face is changing undertones depending on a specific emotion (Benitez-Quiroz, F., Srinivasan, R., Martinez, A. M. (2018) Facial color is an efficient mechanism to visually transmit emotion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.) When the mood swins, the blood circulation in facial skin subconsciously helps to express how we feel, while receiving mutually gentle signals from our communication partners.

At the current exhibition, a scheduled spectacle opens up in the form of vessels changing colours. Also, the subject of emoticons with similar pattern is brought up – specific colours are attributed to certain facial expressions. The kinetic cycle starts with water heaters while inviting the viewer to slow down and observe alternating shades. These static beings, frequently changing moods, become hot and cool down just like hinting at something.

The artist expresses her gratitude to : Andra Jõgi, Anne Eelmere, Astra Aavik, Benedikte Bjerre, Chih Tung Lin, Estonian Artists’ Association, Eve Koha, Fabrikken for Kunst og Design, Indrek Köster, Karel Koplimets, Merike Estna, Otto Varjust, the Maasik family, proloogkool, Tiiu Saadoja, Tõnu Narro.

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

Liina Siib will open her personal exhibition Huldufólk / Hidden People in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on Wednesday, January 15th, 2019. Exhibition will be open until February 3rd, 2020.

The highlight of Liina Siib’s installation „Huldufólk“, located on both floors of the gallery, lies in the silent tragicomical piece composed by photographs, a tragicomedy with derived words, a silent film and a comic strip.

The tragicomic strip is set in winter, in the surroundings of the back door of a 24-hour food store in Reykjavik. The geographical location does not really matter here much more than perhaps recognizing larger fish crates, longer lasting nights, rapid change of weather and temperatures; depicted activities and related attributes can be found anywhere in the world. One can see single or several store workers smoking in front of the open back door either during the day or in the evenings while now and then re-organizing the towering heaps of crates in their limited territory.

At the end of the month, the scene will be changed by the crowd consisting people from Eastern European countries and other non-local individuals entering the “stage”, performing various cleaning work. Just like the store is open 24 hours a day, so the backyard of the store is never empty while those interested in the contents of the garbage bins keep coming and going. Everyone in this crowd seems to have his or her own role in the exchange and movement of the goods.

„Huldufolk“ means “hidden people” in Icelandic – these are supernatural beings who look and behave like normal people but have their own activities in their own parallel world. They can make themselves visible for humans who can see them through a colourful glass.

The photographic and film material has been collected in 2018 when the artist worked in the residency at The Steina and Woody Vasulka Archive at the National Gallery of Iceland.

The artist’s gratitude goes to: Vasulka Chamber at the National Gallery of Iceland, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Kristin Schewing, Ragnheidur Vignisdottir, Sandra Fritz, Terry Gunnell, Mark Fisher, Mánudjass, 10-11 food store in Reykjavik, Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo, Corina Apostol, Rait Miltorp, Fred Reeds, Kaire Rannik, Maria Izabella Lehtsaar and Liis-Marleen Verilaskja.

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.

Kirke Kangro and Sheri Wills will open their exhibition The Solemn Admonition of Your Breathing in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on Thursday, February 6th, 2020. Exhibition will be open until February 23rd, 2020.

Today as then I turn to stone
in your presence, sea,
but no longer feel worthy
of the solemn admonition of your breathing

Eugenio Montale

You look at the sea, and your substance begins to change. You look at it to look at something that’s not you. To implode and collapse. To be boundless, diverse and present. This view you could mount on a wall. To go back, to return in microscopic particles. Accelerating gaze, looking at the evading view.

The exhibition is carried by human imagination of an ancient, lasting, uninterrupted existence. Force of nature that is captivating in its wild independence. The title is a line from Eugenio Montale’s poem that presents a nostalgic view of an uncontrolled and curing nature. It’s an idea of a powerful agency that surrounds us, yet stays untouched by us, being able to cleanse itself. In the poem, the sea casts out all the “useless rubble”, inutili macerie. But our traces are everywhere. You need to measure the heartbeats of a mussel to recognize the unexpected impact of your rubble.

The installations deal with the pleasures of looking and the way they may evolve.
The gallery environment presents a view that the artists are trying to control.
Or are they trying to show something uncontrollable?

The artist’s gratitude goes to: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, TalTech Department of Marine Systems Basseinikatted Ltd, Riisipere Puit, Estonian Environment Agency, Rhode Island School of Design, Estonian Academy of Arts, Kai Künnis-Beres, Ivan Kuprijanov, Toivo Lehtmets, Ain Kilk, Tatiana Kuznetsova, Anastasiia Kovtun-Kante, Tanel Tätte, Hans Otto Ojaste, Maarja Kangro, Anna Magdaleena Kangro, Neeme Külm, Andrus Lauringson, Margit Säde, Madis Luik, Tarvo Varres

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.

Cloe Jancis and Maris Karjatse will open their first co-exhibition Meanwhile at 6pm on Wednesday, February 26th, 2020. Exhibition will be open until March 16.

With their first collaboration project, artists Maris Karjatse and Cloe Jancis focus on objects related to human body as well as on the dynamics and tension developing between public and intimate space.
Through activating objects and materials as well as interpreting the communication of their inner and outer characteristics, the artists create artifacts with new meanings. The working process of Cloe Jancis and Maris Karjatse includes constant, if not continuous becoming something; endless transformation of form and representation; delay of the result; or even return to the beginning in order to proceed.

Maris Karjatse has been inspired by the principle of singularity and multiplicity while completing artworks for the current exposition. The artist’s theoretical source is Gilles Deleuze’s idea about losing the limitations between objects and thoughts as both are inseparable and without each other both would lose their transformative identity. The series of photographic objects “Sub Rosa” refers to process, unfinishedness, deterritorialization of an object, resistance of material and working with form. Her textual piece “Tekkst” compares text to a blanket and vice versa ‒ everything that a text / a blanket covers is most exposed and vulnerable. Both a text and a blanket are made of vibrant matter, including both suffocating danger and softening solace.

Cloe Jancis with her two-part work “Befitting Flesh” focuses on nude objects widely used in today’s make-up and fashion industry; objects that aim at matching one’s skin tone, at emphasizing the selected body parts as well as hiding the unwanted. The artist is intrigued by the phenomenon where the objects, that should blend in with the body and remain invisible, will boost as an artificial shell while conquering the body as an object. The piece “Befitting Flesh I” highlights items of clothing as a material in anticipation of filling and fulfilling ‒ a body and desiring gaze ‒ in order to realize. Video installation “Befitting Flesh II” rehearses fitting process through repetition while nullifying achieving the desired form.

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.

The artists give their gratitude to: Tõnu and Marie Karjatse, Kiki, Aksel Haagensen, Liina Siib, Marco Laimre, Sirja-Liisa Eelma, Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo and the department of photography at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Madis Kaasik (Prototyping Lab at the Estonian Academy of Arts), Tarmo Rämmi (Digifoto), Pille Kraas (UBS Repro), Veiko Illiste (Deviis), Carl-Robert Kagge, Martin Buschmann, Aadu and Maara Lambot, Laura Cemin, Marge Monko, Kulla Laas, Kaupo Reisenbuk (Datel), Järsi LLC, Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Manfred Dubov‘s personal exhibition Revellers in the Dark will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Wednesday, May 20th, 2020 and will stay open until June 29th. With his current exhibition, the artist asks whether it is possible to be happy during the difficult times, in the middle of a catastrophe?

Catastrophes and happiness may happen both on a personal and global level. One way of being joyful is not having to worry about the essentials. A catastrophe can be defined as a larger amount of problems and lack of resources for coping with the situation. Self-realization is possible only when basic needs are guaranteed. Thus, we can call ourselves happy when we don’t have to be concerned about the essentials. Even during the pandemic-free period our basic needs can be perceived – what is vital and what’s not. At first glance, the theme of the exhibition may seem dead serious, but the paintings on display are rather humorous and introspective in nature.

Revellers in the Dark places the characters in a darkened space where they seem to be glowing. The character of The Arriver seems to be burnt – the surrounding blotches of paint or flashes of light as well as the distorted space refer to flames. The Descender/Ascender is smiling despite the hellish surroundings and the physical deterioration of the character’s body, while being able to exit the space. The sky above the character is bright and full of sunshine, and there is a future perspective even in death. I Come from Several Places at Once refers to a group of exhausted characters who have gathered in difficult conditions and who will move on together. The Traveller is a vague character, searching for an anchor in a wasteland while probably being also the one providing support.

Manfred Dubov

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

The annual exhibition From the Roots of the Estonian Fashion Designers’ Union will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Wednesday, July 1st 2020. Exhibition will be open until August 3rd.

At the present exhibition former clothing culture meets contemporary fashion design. Through innovative working methods and modern solutions, fashion designers express respect towards their origin, beauty ideals of various generations as well as the phenomenon of continuity.

In their creative process, the participating artists have been most inspired by a clothing item or an everyday object that has belonged to the artist’s close family member. The artists have been influenced by the activities, rituals and clothing of their relatives dating back to the artists’ childhood – while now analyzing the aspects connecting or disconnecting them to the individuals related to their memories. Participating artists have chosen the old photographs, letters and everyday items that have deeply influenced them and these are now on display for the exhibition viewers who can thus test the strength of their so-called genetic code and contemplate on the inevitability of one’s roots. Every exhibited piece is equipped with an explanatory text and the portraits of both the artists and the close relatives who have inspired them.

Participating artists: Ainikki Eiskop, Anu Hint, Anu Ling, Anne Metsis, Astri Müül, Diana Denissova, Eve Tiidolepp, Ilona Tamm, Joan Hint, Kai Saar, Katre Arula, Kärt Karjatse, Küllike Tuvikene, Külli Kerttu Siplane, Liivika Põvat-Straus, Merle Lõhmus, Piret Kuresaar, Thea Pilvet Martinson, Tiia Orgna.

Organizer of the exhibition: Estonian Fashion Designers’ Union
Exhibition design: Anu Hint
Supporters: Estonian Artists’ Association
Publications: MinuPrint

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

Lylian Meister‘s personal exhibition Treasure Island will be opened in Hobusepea gallery at 5pm on Wednesday, August 5, 2020. Exhibition will be open until August 31st, 2020.

Lylian Meister comments on her present exhibition as follows:
Treasure Island is an exhibition about restlessness, yearning, searching, journeys and in a way meaningless desires. Eclectic and colourful, composed with lightness.
I was working on the exhibition as an amateur anthropologist, researching myself. I simply took paintings off the walls of my bedroom and brought these together with my other domestic things to my gallery for one month. I contemplated on my personal Odyssey and Penelopeia. I stitched and glued roses in order to share my secrets below these. I drew a new continent on the globe with borrowed pencils. I did what I wanted.

I went to the sea in the island of Muhu,
The blacksmith of Sõrve peninsula offered me sauna,
And I wove fabric in Kerala.

I floated as a Great Mother on water. The salty sea was around me and instead of blood there was sugar floating in my veins. I wept and sugar crystals sank to the ground as pearls. Life like a shipwreck! The pirates of Suuremõisa Castle threw me a lifebuoy, gave me the keys to the treasury and caused me nightmares at night. Their castle has double ceiling and the whole island is not real. Hiiumaa is a continent that rises from water on a full-moon night once a century. On my birthday. I receive as many presents as I can carry, yet nothing belongs to me … not even my lover … . I am living a double life with double standards.

Medusa’s snakes are reborn while guarding my great treasure on the continent. When is the moment when another person’s artwork is reborn and becomes mine? Is it enought when I have added a third eye to a cross-stitched cat and decorated every spot with my initials? I am a sugar-blooded thief. I want to obtain and win! Every evening I gamble myself away in order to win. When does one become a property of another? My lover says: „You cannot appreciate your game partners.“ He has not decided yet for what he wants to trade me.

Residents of Hiiumaa island buy me off. They know all the winds and they have a boat in every harbour. The wind turns, I’ve got navigational charts, my father’s compass and my grandpa’s pocket watch. Treasure hunt is but a pretext; what I want is a journey that would hit and amaze me. I will get myself back in a hundred years if I can carry the present ashore. In Hiiu Shoal, human years start to go backwards.

According to poet Ilmar Laaban, „the end of an anchor chain is a beginning of a song …“.

Present exhibition involves collaborators: Katarina Meister – paintings, Father Imanta (Imanta Lember from Sõru parish, Hiiumaa island) – ironworks; Kristel Kaerma – details, crocheted snake; Aet Randorg – patchwork quilt; and many unknown authors.

I wish to express my gratitude to: Tarmo Rajangu, resident of Hiiumaa island, who allowed me to explore his shed full of treasures; Kaido Lember, resident of Sõru parish, Hiiumaa island, and his wife Velda Lainoja who borrowed me Father Imanta’s creative heritage; Mall Tamberg who completed most of the needleworks; Vasudevan and Tasara Art Centre in India where threads were dyed and cotton textiles were woven according to my designs; Marko Nautras who helped to complete the photographs; Mika Orav who allowed me to use his personal estate; Hiiumaa Vocational School and Suuremõisa Castle non-profit association for their extensive support; Kristel Kaerma, Einar Keskpaik and Volli Lainoja for their assistance and inspiration.

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.

Ulvi Haagensen’s solo exhibition Thea Koristaja Museum at Hobusepea Gallery opens on Wednesday, 2 September 2020 at 6pm. The exhibition is open until 21 September, 2020.

“Welcome to our place”, says Thea Koristaja, as she opens the door and indicates for us to enter an exhibition that explores the connections between art and everyday life. Thea Koristaja is an imaginary person, an artist, and a cleaner and this is her museum. Together with two other imaginary artists, known as Olive Puuvill and Loome Uurija, she works with Ulvi Haagensen, who is quite real, to explore how art and life can meet, converge, overlap and sometimes clash.

The exhibition uses the upstairs and downstairs of the gallery to present two different contexts – the exhibition space and the studio. Upstairs is clean and tidy, not dissimilar to a living room or hallway in a home – after all, we want to make a good impression, don’t we? But the real action of everyday life may in fact take place somewhere else, in the kitchen, the laundry, in front of the telly, in the everyday, when the visitors aren’t visiting. Downstairs is the cluttered, untidy workspace. This is where Haagensen and her imaginary team discover the unexpected as they push the familiar into new territory. A discarded greeny-blue Värska mineral water bottle, new and recycled timber, a length of rusted steel, wool and cotton yarns in a myriad of colours – all start to find a persona or a potential they never knew they had. Is it possible, here in the studio, to see the most exciting part, the magic of making, the moment when the thing emerges as a thing? Or is that something that takes place in the artist’s mind and can’t be shared?

Exhibitions at Hobusepea Gallery are supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment, the Ministry of Culture and Liviko AS.

Angela Soop‘s personal exhibition War and Peace I will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Thursday, September 24th, 2020. Exhibition will be open until October 12, 2020.

There is no war, yet someone hurts my heart every day.
Madis Kõiv

Angela Soop: “Current exhibition serves as the first one from the cycle consisting of four parts. The cycle arises and changes according to the surrounding and inner state. The meanings of the words “war” and “peace” depend on the ways of interpretation and the context. While preparing for this exhibition I was unable to foresee the situation today. Concepts have become more reverse, yet the lights seem to have turned down a bit. Borders become vague, volumes coincide and transform. The exhibition is based on perceiving the states and observing various influencing factors. In one case the focus lies on status and the other case concentrates on activity.
Strong contrasts and soft lights, sharp corners and round reflections, great words or silence – the connection will be made in any case. While navigating inside oneself and solving the areas of conflict, it is possible to win time and space in order to survive. The exhibition is not a statement but an opportunity for being.”

The artist expresses her gratitude to: Hans-Otto Ojaste, Maiu Mooses, ARS Art Factory, Vaba Lava, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Siim Soop, Lea Tammik, Ra Sun.

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

August Sai‘s personal exhibition Paint Story will be open in Hobusepea gallery from Wednesday, October 14, 2020. Exhibition will stay open until November 2nd, 2020.

Once upon a time, chunks of ice lived on a faraway planet. On a hot and sunny day, they started to crack and melt. Five chunks of ice saw the opportunity for an adventure during the changes. They drifted apart from others in the sea of ice and headed for the seven seas to search for happiness.

However, halfway during their trip the chunks of ice started to crack. One of the chunks got frightened and turned around. Four chunks fearlessly continued their journey and melted. But it turned out that nothing terrible happened. The chunks became a part of the sea and this gave them new powers. They started to discover the expanse of the sea while diving deep to the sea floor and rising as foamy waves on the shore. All this was exhausting for them so they took a peaceful nap under the sun.

When waking up, they realized with terror that they were floating in the air and rising in the form of vapour above the sea. One of the chunks did not dare to take off and remained in the sea. Three chunks went up to the sky and became a cloud. After all, it was quite fine to be a cloud and to be flown around by the wind. They flew above mountains, deserts and forests. But before they grew tired of being a cloud, a sudden rumble could be heard. The cloud started to shake and grew thicker and thicker. A lightning struck. The chunks hidden in the cloud were startled and began shivering even more. One chunk of ice did not dare to let go of the cloud and squeezed it so that two chunks became rain and poured down from the sky at an enormous speed, followed by the orchestra of an echoing rumble and the bright lightnings. They dashed down until they crashed something immense and unknown. Everything all around was filled with silence and darkness.

At the same time, the situation at the sea of ice was heated up since the chunks of ice that had remained were quarreling with each other. Some of them were looking for the reasons behind their trouble in the seagulls flying by and in the waves arriving from the faraway countries. The chunks evil-mindedly terrorized other chunks with the flocks of seagulls and tsunamis. Despite the fact that seagulls prefer to gather on dumping grounds. And tsunamis normally won’t arise without a reason but due to the earthquakes taking place in the deep sea. It is so deep down that no chunk of ice wouldn’t bother taking a look at it, since the chunks are already filled with water because of staying put and hiding their cracks.

When the chunks of ice that rained down from the cloud finally recovered, they found themselves floating above the ground between trees. They had turned into fog. One of the chunks didn’t want to be fog and vaporized back to a cloud. The last existing chunk of ice was floating as fog in a shady forest. It hugged the tree trunks and moistened the moss until it arrived at a sunny clearing and fell down as drops to the ground. The earth swallowed the chunk that had turned into water. There was silence and peace in the deep inside of its dark bosom. Suddenly everything the ground started to shake around the chunk. A rapid stream grabbed hold of the chunk and dragged it along. The chunk was surrounded by the babbling and deafening sound. The stream twirled and squeezed the chunk while pushing it up and down, to the right and left and throwing it out to bright light from total darkness. Now the chunk had become a fierce river on the ground. Having flown with foam for quite some time, the river’s flow grew slower – it had reached the sea.

It noticed the chunk of ice in the sea that had left behind from others, but the chunk didn’t recognize the river. Then the chunk in the river saw the chunk of ice floating in the sky as a cloud and the fog that thought it was a cloud – and together they held tight to each other while squeezing tears out of the cloud. But they didn’t recognize the river as well. The chunk in the river realized that even those chunks who had left behind in the sea of ice remained strangers. They won’t know that all of them are everything at the same time – the sea, the clouds, the rain and the fog, the rivers and the lakes, and also the characters of a fairy tale. That’s the end of the story. If you wish to continue the adventure then choose to GO TO THE EXHIBITION!

Paint Story is an exhibition about paint that cannot stand still. While searching for the new ways of self-expression for the painting, paint is changing its form and testing the limits of its abilities. The fairy tale ends and the adventure continues.

August Sai

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

Exhibition His Dreams were Nothing Remarkable by Art Allmägi and Keiu Virro will be open in Hobusepea gallery since Wednesday, November 4th, 2020. Exhibition will be open until November 23rd, 2020.

Early this year, Art Allmägi made an inventory of his artwork. Different exhibitions have included numerous sculptures and installations which have no extra function, unlike the artwork produced for public space. Among them are the sculptures exhibited in his personal exhibition “I Had a Dream Last Night” in Hobusepea gallery in 2012. Actually, these sculptures should have been stayed in a storage. Not because of damage by mice nor the battered beds but because of the controversial content of the dreams that Art has described beside the sculptures.

Hence, if there is something under question that perhaps it should not exist, Art’s artistic vision is mainly as follows: it should! If someone says that men with guns in art should be already left behind as history, Art makes six of them (“Paint it Black”) and shows the pieces several times.

The exhibition “I Had a Dream Last Night” included insane descriptions about dreams where several men approach Art with indecent proposals. Alas, these texts have started to remind of the fear of homosexuality, the topic that our government members seriously tend to discuss these days. Now it felt necessary to overview these texts. However, how to stay away from the situation that these won’t become a part of bulk of texts recreating negative approach? What if Art would sincerely rewrite these dreams, would these have the same impact on the spectator? It is not only the question of being, but also of seeming. Classics.

So it happened that Art Allmägi called someone who seemed trustworthy enough and seems to be the opposite of the meaning of his original texts. Journalists (as “social influencers”, thought Art by himself) think and write on these subjects. Art called Keiu Virro asking her to rewrite his texts. While being skeptical about influence, optimistic about Art’s ideas and having not seen the devastation by mice yet, Keiu said “yes”.

Thanks to: Anette Parksepp, Mari-Liis Vind, Alo Allmägi, Taivo Timmusk, Kristi Kongi, Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The exhibitions in Hobusepea Gallery are supported by Estonian Clutural Endowment, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

Britta Benno‘s personal exhibition Ruinenlust in Lasnamäe will be open in Hobusepea gallery since Wednesday, November 25th, 2020. Exhibition will be open until December 14, 2020.

When waking up from a lunch-time nap, it had transformed to a gigantic future dinosaur that no one had ever seen before. One can imagine the soaked bulks of houses thrown on a hillocky landscape behind the fog. These are the ruins of concrete panel houses that have luckily survived in a spot that once was called Lasnamäe.

The cuboids had no windows nor doors, darkness smirked its toothless grin behind the cavities. And yet, there was no emptiness there – new life had moved in Lasnamäe. Creatures like the dinosaur were living there – huge, miraculous animals whose ancestors originated from the Anthropocene.

Ruinenlust in Lasnamäe is a science fictional prospective to post-human urban landscape where jungle and mountaneous terrain with the future creatures have taken over the ruins of a former bedroom community. Pleasure of looking at the ruins, Ruinenlust, is projected to the district of Lasnamäe that has lost the heavy burden of meanings. The message has been expressed through the models of houses characteristic to Lasnamäe have been used in puppet animation as well as the etching drawings that look like findings from an ancient civilisation.

Marginal and old-time arts, printmaking and stereoscopic puppet animation accompanied by harpsichord music form a staged installation. Concern about the dystopian state of our environment motivates to imagine the post-human future. Hybrid art and layered combination becomes the tool of such imagination and depiction.

Current exhibition also serves as Britta Benno’s second peer-reviewed creative output of her studies in the Doctoral School at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In her artistic research, Benno concentrates on depicting science fictional landscape in the extended field of drawing and printmaking.

Benno’s last pop-up exhibition Of Becoming a Shape of a Land(Scape) was completed during a residency in Iceland and was opened for a few days in Outver gallery, Iceland. In Tallinn the same exhibition project, titled as Once I Had, was held together with Heather Beardsley in Kraam Project Room in the autumn of 2019. The most prominent personal exhibition Dystopic Tallinn was open in Tallinn Art Hall gallery in the summer of 2019.

The artist expresses her gratitude to: Ragnar Neljandi (cameraman, animator, post-production), Heigo Eeriksoo (puppet master), Mait Eerik (prop master), Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Nukufilm LLC.

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