Baltic exhibition guide
June
06/06/2019
Summer is finally here, and one of the best ways to refresh yourself from the sun and daily routine during these hot days is to dive into some art events. As usual, Arterritory.com offers its readers a selection of this month’s best exhibitions in the Baltic States!
TARTU
Congregation of Chaos at Kogo Gallery
Until 22 June
From 18 May until 22 June, the Kogo Gallery in Tartu is hosting Retrospective, a group show by artists-witnesses to the permanently transient immeasurable manifestation of the omnieternally disappearing and emerging chaos. As a spontaneously flowing spatial installation, the exhibition aims to look back upon the perpetual conflict between humanity and the universe, which has been tormenting man from the moment the first human hand reached for a stone axe.
Congregation of Chaos’s Retrospective is a deconstructive process that refrains from concentrating on authors, works or references and meanings between, but instead creates a spontaneously changing common space filled with the pure flow of boundless creation.
Participating artists are Martiini, Salme Kulmar, Marja-Liisa Plats, Helle Ly Tomberg, Paul Lepasson, Uku Pira, Martin Rästa, Siim Lill, Kersten Kõrge and Gabriela Liivamägi.
TALLINN
“A Situation” at Tallinn City Gallery
14 June – 18 August
From 14 June until 18 August, A Situation curated by Andreas Nilsson will be on view at the Tallinn City Gallery. The exhibition is arranged as open scenery with no real back or front stage. The works of art – spanning sculpture, video, performance, painting and installation – can partly be read as different acts of a play with no clear narrative or connection.
A Situation is the third in a series of exhibitions curated by Nilsson that discusses temporality, the relationship between the ephemeral and the permanent, and the space in between performance-based art and visual art.
The artists participating in the exhibition are Julia Bondesson, Merike Estna, Luca Frei, Jaakko Pallasvuo and Filip Vest.
Photos by Tanja Muravskaja at KUMU
17 May – 27 October
From 17 May until 27 October, the Garden Exile: The Tuglas’s Home Garden Through Tanja Muravskaja’s Camera Lens exhibition will be on view at the KUMU exhibition spaces in Tallinn.
The exhibition focuses on photography as a powerful narrative technique. The starting point was photographic records of the home garden of the writer Friedebert Tuglas and his wife, Elo Tuglas, which form both an aesthetically and contextually fascinating source material. From 2016 to 2019, using various methods of contemporary photographic art, Tanja Muravskaja examined the photos of the Tuglas garden itself and the garden as a general symbol.
Elnara Taidre is the curator of the exhibition.
RIGA
Two exhibitions at the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall
7 June – 26 August
14 June – 14 July
From 7 June until 26 August the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall will host Dance at the Lonely Hearts Club, a major solo show by Estonian artist Kaido Ole. The title of the exhibition not only contains a reference to one of Ole’s paintings, but the implied notion of dance also provides a perfect metaphorical connection to his art in a broader context. Simultaneously, the exhibition reveals another important facet of the artist’s personality: the conscious and systematic use of the creative process for self-reflection and self-observation.
The curator of this exhibition is Māris Vītols, the director of the Latvia Cultural Projects association.
From 14 June until 14 July at the Creative Studio of the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall, visitors are invited to the group show Euro Femmes, curated by feminist artist Mētra Saberova. The exhibition focuses on aspects of feminist art and includes works by young Latvian and international artists Elīna Brasliņa, Vivianna Marija Stanislavska, Mētra Saberova, Daria Blum, Kirstin Barnes and Camila Gonzalez Corea.
The artists deal with a broad spectrum of feminist topics that are difficult to be realised by Latvian society, which is still battling through notions of traditional (i.e. discriminating) perceptions of gender and sexuality. In the context of this, the works by the young artists from Latvia showcase that patriarchy does not stop feminism from flourishing in our own back garden.
During the exhibition, the London-based American curator and writer Herb Shellenberger will host a screening of Cave Girls + Trashy Fashions: Unseen Post-Punk Videos by Women compiled from footage made in the 1970s and 1980s by experimental female filmmakers in the United States.
Mark Sun Roz solo show at Look Gallery
Until 15 June
From 24 May until 15 June, the solo show Make sculpture great again! by young artist Mark Sun Roz is on view at the newly opened Look Gallery in Riga.
Roz is a young sculptor from Latvia who is currently studying for his master’s degree at the Art Academy of Latvia. His outstanding contemporary sculptures are based on well-known graphic characters and are full of humour. Roz adores the modern world in all of its limitless diversity, is inspired by his daily surroundings, and captures it all in his sculptures – sometimes praising it, and sometimes just making fun of it all.
The Look Gallery is a new exhibition space in Riga that focuses on young, contemporary Latvian artists.
“Fresh Meat For Critique” by the Art Academy of Latvia
3–28 June
A group show by this year’s graduates of the Art Academy of Latvia is being held from 3–28 June at the former Faculty of Biology of the University of Latvia.
Fresh Meat For Critique offers a brand-new format for exhibiting – for the first time in the history of the Art Academy of Latvia, the public can see works of art from every single department at the academy. Works by approximately 160 bachelor’s and master’s degree graduates are introduced to the wider audience, making it the largest exhibition of work by emerging artists in Latvian history.
The new format of the graduate exhibition demonstrates the academy’s policy of openness and marks a break with the connotation of the word ‘academic’, which has acquired quite a heavy reputation. The exhibition returns to the original sense of this word, namely, the academy in the antique world that emerged as a free, open-minded and creative process of thought.
This exhibition is a part of the celebration dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Art Academy of Latvia.
VILNIUS
Indrė Šerpytytė at Vartai Gallery
6 June till 26 July
From 6 June until 26 July, the Vartai Gallery is holding the solo show From. Between. To by Lithuanian artist Indrė Šerpytytė.
The exhibition coincides with When the Golden Sun Sinks, a solo display of newly commissioned works at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum in Great Britain. At Vartai Gallery, Šerpytytė shows a series of new textile works for the first time in Vilnius.
At the core of Šerpytytė’s practice lies an interest in conflict and its accompanying trauma. Working across photography, sculpture and mixed media, much of her previous work centres on the recent history of Lithuania, how it is recalled and its influence on national identity. However, these new works step away from such specificity, instead exploring the use of culturally charged symbols as an abstract language: a form of communication that traces a universal discourse.
Works from the series From. Between. To are included in Vitamin T, a major new book published in April by Phaidon.
“Moist Muscles Await” at (AV17) Gallery
Until 22 June
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From 14 May until 22 June, the solo show Moist Muscles Await by Italian-Slovene artist Luca Vanello is on view at the (AV17) Gallery in Vilnius.
Humanity’s relentless attempts to control time and thereby achieve immortality are reflected in Vanello’s research. The objects exhibited in Moist Muscles Await can be defined as abstract sculptural processes and the results of various physical manipulations, emancipated from any kind of symbolism. Functioning as an ecosystem, they escape the anthropocentric vision of the world and enable us to take a fragmental look at the precariousness of existence. In his research-informed creative process, Vanello deforms non-human entities and matter by exploring their social, technological and biological implications. Plants, inanimate objects and images are all seen as part of the same organic whole that merges with the surrounding social fields.
