Imaginary landscapes, life patterns and village people: art with Seto-sign

Places which are located outside the Tallinn border are still for the inhabitants of Tallinn only “romantic picnic places”, as it was once pertinantly said by an art historian, and also the local art is “secondary” regarding the main stream and it should be taken as a half-exotic – half-etnographic phenomenon. Obviously it is easier to travel from Tallinn to London or Nice than to Obinitsa.

While talking about art, having been created in the Seto area, it would be most convenient to leave aside everything connected with etnography, national traditions, border agreement and ether. Enough of self-colonization. And let’s rather not talk of Peko either. He has always seemed to be a character who is not being talked about. And if we can not talk of anything, it would be wiser not to talk at all. Therefore I shall tell in a very concrete manner of painings by Erki Jürise and Evar Riitsaar that jointly form the exhibition S.O.S.

Title of the exhibition S.O.S or Save Our Souls sounds as an alarming cry for help. Who should be rescued? What should be rescued? Is it Setomaa? Or artists? Or art? Actually it seems that the situation is under control and two South Estonian men exhibit firmly their recent years’ paintings.

Evar Riitsaar presents three painting series: portraits of his family and village people, a group of witches or exorcists and mystical landscapes. In his works Evar has left aside the collage technique which was recently exposed at the Hobusepea gallery at the exhibition “Peko helü” and has moved towards more organic painting. Series of miniature landscape motifs (even though some of us would rather consider it a series of a golden egg) moves rather towards an imaginary landscape than is trying to depict a concrete or imaginary section of room. Views and fields in his works can be hardly noticed, but exactly this makes the works by Evar so enigmatic, full of half-mystical golden light. Portraits, the most powerful of which is certainly the artist’s self-portrait on a pink background, has been painted in naivistic style. People like people usually are rather honest and familiar than beautiful. Village people and wise men (on four works of medium format in brown colours) have gather into the exhibition hall to share an encoded message on the works of another artist, Erki Jürise, participating also at S.O.S.

Erki Jürise, having graduated a couple of years ago from Tartu Higher School of Arts, presents at the exhibition his “Ümbersünnid” (“Rebirths”) series, which handles the changing process at different stages of life, from birth till death and from genetics to the Eastern religion and mythology. The fundamental system of self-creation and renewal of life is a network, in which each change contributes to other processes and the following rebirths. The works form a journey through the electromagnetic evolution of the universe, the biological evolution of the world and the mental evolution of the spirit. We are dealing with  certain meditation flashes, which in their form copy mandalas, but collect into themselves an abundance of informational symbols from quant physics to cosmology. “Paintings”, having been executed in the technique called corrography, are sense-forwarding pattern structures which have been etched onto rolled sheet-metal that has been covered with a thin varnish layer in order to prevent further corroding. The latter makes the series very much dependant on light and offers a viewer especially pleasant colour and light sensations.