“The garden of stretching figures (and other forms of metamorphosis)” by Jaan Luik

On Friday, 8 September at 5 p.m., Jaan Luik will open his solo exhibition “The garden of stretching figures (and other forms of metamorphosis)” in the large gallery of the Tartu Art House. The curators of the exhibition are Johannes Luik and Laura De Jaeger.

The exhibition provides a unique look at the studio of the artist and contains his works from the collection of the Tartu Art Museum. This is the first major retrospective of Jaan Luik’s work. It presents a broad selection of sculptures by the artist made from 1976 to 2023. 

The artist moves with a modernist approach through the notion of form and the potential of form. He combines this with research on semiotics, cultural heritage and the process of pictographic representations. Luik’s sculptures deal with the original meaning of a sign, interpretations and relationships to the abstract art object. How far can a sign be manipulated, abstracted or transformed while staying true to its original meaning? And how much of the independent, three-dimensional art object still stands on its own, autonomously, when relating to a sign? The exhibition moves through a wide variety of material, and shows how the artist's practice moves from the depiction of a body to semi-abstract signs, and slowly morphs back to the figure again.  

It is accompanied by his first monograph, “Jaan Luik: Practice”, illustrating Luik’s position in the Estonian sculptural field.

Jaan Luik (b. 1953) is an Estonian sculptor. He has been exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions since 1979, with recent solo exhibitions in the Pärnu City Gallery (2017), the Võru Town Gallery (2018) and the Vabaduse gallery in Tallinn (2019). The works on display are from the collection of the Tartu Art Museum and private collections. He received the Anton Starkopf prize in 2006. Luik taught in the Tartu Art School, University of Tartu and Imatra Art School (Finland). From 1995 to 1997, he was the chairman of the Tartu artist union.

Graphic Design: Henri Kutsar
Special thanks to the Tartu Art Museum.
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The exhibition is open until 8 October.

Additional information:
Urmo Teekivi
Tartu Art House producer
Tel: +372 5562 1192
E-post: produtsent@kunstimaja.ee

Tartu Art House
Vanemuise 26, 51014 Tartu
Wed–Mon 12.00–18.00
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