Events

The most extensive overview of how Tartu Art Museum’s collections are formed celebrates the largest art collection in southern Estonia. Based on the last decade’s acquisitions (purchases and donations), Report to the Audience. Acquisitions of Tartmus brings together works by both well-known and aspiring artists from Estonia and abroad from the first half of the 20th century to the present day.   Each year, the museum’s acquisition committee decides which artworks should be added to the collection either through purchases with funding from the Cultural Endowment of 50 000 euros annually or through donations by collectors, artists or their inheritors. Since 2010, the museum has registered over 2 000 items.   The effort of building up an extensive collection is the cornerstone of the museum’s work.

Tartu Art Museum’s artworks collections are the second biggest in Estonia. Exhibition “Mysticism and Eros” introduces the Tartmus collection through works on sexuality. The museum’s collection includes erotic caricatures, intimate drawings, allegorical and mythological works of sexuality, all of which provide a broad and deep basis for the exhibition. The various authors in the collection have covered sexual themes through mythological, allegorical, and also folkloristic aspects.   The exhibition is divided into sub-topics: enticement, partner searching, prominence, and family and fertility. Archetypal original myths and figures in the art are a great way to discover the rich cultural heritage through a fascinating theme and also to show the depth of the Tartu Art Museum’s art collection.   Curators: Amar Annus, Kadri Mägi Coordinator: Kristlyn Liier Education and audience program: Kristel Sibul

Mirjam Hinn’s exhibition “High Voltage” focuses on intense states of mind and on their role in being human. By dismantling extreme experience, both positive and negative, into their constituent elements, the exhibition seeks the common base structures that characterize all the exhilarating experiences that Hinn has captured into the dazzling color gamut of her abstract paintings. Mirjam Hinn (1990) has graduated from the Tartu Art College (BA) and the Department of Painting of the University of Tartu (MA). In her oeuvre, Hinn has gradually moved from figurative paintings to increasingly abstract compositions. In the spring 2018 exhibition “Solidified Sounds” in the Tartu Art House, Hinn combined her abstract paintings into a single magnificent composition using exhibition design that earned her the AkzoNobel Art Prize. The exhibition “High Voltage”, which takes place in the project space of the Tartu Art Museum, starts from a similar point by merging the exhibition space into a coherent whole with the paintings using light and sound effects.

Karel Koplimets and Maido Juss will open their co-exhibition Flat Circle in Draakon gallery at 6pm on Monday, November 4, 2019. With their video installation of the same title, the artists explore the issues spreading out from the overabundance of information in today's media, human consciousness and beliefs.   Overabundance of information is associated to an individual's difficulty to receive large quantities of data as well as to distinguish relevant info from the irrelevent. In 2016, the mankind generated about 44 exabytes of information in Internet every day, whereby 90% of all information existing in the world was produced during the past few years. It is estimated that by the year 2025 the amount increases tenfold. Everyone having the access to (free) Internet seems to have an access to endless amount of data.

Angela Maasalu will open her personal exhibition "Cave for Forgotten Dreams" in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on Wednesay, November 6, 2019.   Things are  changing; things are starting to   spin, snap, fly off into    the blue sleeve of the long     afternoon. Oh and ooh come whistling out of the perished mouth   of the grass, as things turns soft, boil back  into substance and hue. As everything,   forgetting its own enchantment, whispers:    I too love oblivion why not it is full     of second chances. Now, hiss the bright curls of the leaves. Now!

Public talk by Flo Kasearu on Tuesday, November 5 at 5pm in room A502   Flo Kasearu (b. 1985): I was born in Soviet Union but grew up in Estonia. I studied painting (2004-2008) and photography (2008-2013) at the Estonian Academy of Arts.  In 2006-2007 I was an exchange student at the Rebecca Horn studio at Berlin University of the Arts, where I started doing performance and video art. I work and live in Flo Kasearu House Museum in Tallinn, Estonia. The nature of my works is seasonal and explorative, in that each project begins as an open-ended game. No favourite theme or a medium. I am interested in grassroots level, private and public space, vertical vs horizontal relationships, monumental vs unstable. I value irony more than aesthetics. So far I have played with private and public space, freedom, economic depression, patriotism and nationalism, domestic violence... More info: www.flokasearu.eu

The project space on the 4th floor of Kumu is a mobile extension of the permanent display of Soviet Estonian art. One of its intents is to create a dialogue between artists from different generations. On this occasion, the exhibition in the project space focusses on the oeuvre of the Tartu art teacher and artist Silvia Jõgever (1924–2005) created in the 1960s and 1970s.

We welcome you to the opening of the exhibition on November 1 at 7pm.   The exhibition A-tishoo, A-tishoo, We All Fall Down deals with dread and hopelessness. It reflects a self-destructive situation where the man-made world is turning on us in an increasingly forceful way. With the participating artists of the exhibition, a journey is created, guided by uncertainty about what lies ahead.   For the first time, the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) is curating collectively to bring together different experiences and ways of thinking, to save resources and reduce overproduction. The exhibition includes the artists Ivana Bašić, Pakui Hardware, Anu Juurak, Jussi Kivi, Raul Keller, Johanna Maria Parv, Hanna Samoson, Emilija Škarnulytė, Peeter Ulas, Brit Pavelson and Sissela Jensen, Aaloe-Ader-Flo-Künnap-Soosalu.

"Lighter Than Woman“ is a poetical-documentary performance about overcoming the gravity of life in direct and indirect meaning. Norman observes Italy's only female astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti as a person who has overcome gravity literally by becoming weightless in outer space. In parallel Norman looks at Ukrainian migrant labourers who live in Italy and who have become caregivers for Italian elders and who carry their burden of final years and experience the heaviness literally by lifting them. Nevertheless, these women don’t crumble under the weight of others' lives. On the contrary, they – even without outer space – can overcome gravity. How it is possible and what role work plays in the happiness of human life are the questions examined in Norman’s piece, where documental research, poetical parallels and gravity defying gaze to the difficulties of human life are combined.   Trained as an artist, Kristina Norman is active both in the field of contemporary art and documentary filmmaking.

On Thursday, 24 October at 5 p.m. Mari-Leen Kiipli’s personal exhibition “no path goes through Asparaag” will be opened in the monumental gallery of the Tartu Art House.   The artist explain her installative exhibition: “I looked around stunned. Dust balls and lint were sticking to my skin, I tried to wipe them off. Looking outside, I was passing through different environments like courtyard, birthday, plastic greenhouse, the impact of grass, argument of the gardeners, moisture rose, leaning stalks, all year long summerhouse, a piece from somewhere else, the body is inevitable.” Mari-Leen Kiipli (b 1988) has studied photography at the Tartu Art College and at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She was one of the founding members of the artist-run space Rundum for which she was awarded the Adamson-Eric Scholarship and the annual award of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.