"Candid Eyes" by Tõnu Tormis & Ilmar Kruusamäe

On Thursday, 13th of February at 6 pm Tõnu Tormis and Ilmar Kruusamäe will open their portrait exhibition "Candid Eyes" at Vaal Gallery. The exhibition will remain open until 15th of March.

Tõnu Tormis (b. 1954) presents 200 black-and-white photographs from the years 1964-2008. That series is called "Behind the Times", and over several decades Tormis has captured mainly cultural figures. Peeter Linnap, head of the Pallas photo department, has noted that many Estonian photographers have considered capturing the portraits of cultural figures as their number one mission. "As if sensing the permanent and tragic risk of our nation's ethnic disappearance, there has been a systematic effort throughout Estonia's history to record and catalogue those who we call the 'elite' - the intellectual vanguard whose legacy has endured despite the endless history of tempests from the East and West."  
As a conceptualizer of Estonian visual culture, Linnap appreciates Tormis’s approach: long-term observation and in-depth understanding of the portrayed person defines the later visual characterization, and each of Tormis's photo-icons assiduously arises from the subject's aura.

Ilmar Kruusamäe (b. 1957) presents nine hyperrealistic paintings, including portraits already known from art exhibitions (Eha Komissarov, Marko Mäetamm, Tõnis Mägi), as well as some of his latest creations (Lembit Sarapuu, Riho Sibul, Albert Gulk). Like Tormis, Kruusamäe started portraying cultural figures already at the end of the last century. As of today, there are 45 depictions in his portrait series "Landscapes of the Soul". Kruusamäe’s large-scale artworks have been time-consuming: as a painter, he follows a process-based approach, with each portrait taking around a year to finish, sometimes even longer. "I usually start in January, when there is already a bit more daylight, and try to find an hour or two every day. In the next six months I managed to paint layer-by-layer quite a lengthy 'video footage' into one single canvas frame. By late autumn, the layered portrait closes in the lightless time again, and after that there's no point to repaint summer sunlight into dull colors. Even the capricious oil paint is by then tamed with those 10-20 layers."

The white cube of the gallery room has been converted into "the chamber of our being". The artworks of Tormis and Kruusamäe create an opportunity for direct gaze into a captivating visual chapter from the biographical lexicon of Estonian intellectual life, which stretches across multiple generations.

The exhibition is supported by Punch Club.

Additional information:
Vaal Gallery
Tel: +372 5302 8766 
E-mail: galerii@vaal.ee
Telliskivi 60A/5, Tallinn
Tue–Fri 12.00–18.00
Sat 12.00–16.00