PAINTING

Jaan Elken

However, the painters continued to paint and the audience to admire their works. Jaan Elken, who has led the Union of Painters since the middle of the decade, remembers that it was difficult to find time to sleep - there was so much going on. Every year, large exhibitions of painters were curated and organized in the Art Hall and the Rotermann's salt warehouse, the Union's general catalog was published, theory conferences were organized, and so on. The present exhibition exhibits both the works of those authors who were already active as painters, as well as those of those who emerged in the 1990s. Jaan Elken (b. 1954) graduated from the University of Art in the 1970s as an architect, but already then he stood out as a painter. However, his nature changed in the 1990s. "In the new and dynamic time, static photorealism did not appeal to me at all," says Elken himself. "So much was happening all at once." For example, the painting "On the Corner of Koidula and Leiner Street III", where he used the motif of a hyperrealist painting exhibited in 1978, indicates that the former style was not canceled, but reused. He placed the most important detail of the painting, the street sign with the name Lydia Koidula, on a shrill yellow background, being there without anything to stand on, according to the artist. "Estonia was currently going through a decade of getting rich, when ideals collapsed and poverty stinks! looked around at all times and places."  However, in the painting "Red Circle" we can see the coexistence of several different painting styles. "The stylistic dualism is perhaps the best part of my work that I reached in the 1990s," says Elken. At the core of “A Different Reality” is a hemp leaf and the slogan “Grow yourself!” – this sign was noticed by the artist during his residency in Northern Poland on a farmer's wooded hobby field. By that time, it was quite common for Elken to also use text in his paintings, preferring strong direct statements to poetic blurbs, sometimes using quotes from the surrounding reality, pop culture, advertisements and so on.

Jüri Arrak, Andres Tolts 

Jüri Arrak did not change his approaches, his grotesque style received new inspiration from the new era, as the turbulent developments of society offered plenty of grotesqueness, weirdness, unprecedentedness. Andres Tolts, who started as a pop artist, continued also in his old style, commenting on what was happening around him by quoting the visuals of the era, but refusing to become directly social. Fragments here and there - that's how it was built in the 90s, since there was no longer a single foundation.

Toomas Vint, Valeri Vinogradov, Anne Parmasto

Toomas Vint fought for the life of painting both in his essays, interviews and paintings. He had found his own kind of characteristics a long time ago, and in the 1990s he developed it further, introducing new motifs and plots and gradually shifting more and more to surrealism. Valeri Vinogradov and Anne Parmasto however moved forward in the search for pure painterly values, focusing on the tectonic movements of colors and forms on the canvas. Predictable transitions, emerging atmospheres, abandonment of narratives fascinated many authors in the noisy 90s, and even if Parmasto referred to political positions with her work, the core of her work still remained in the laboratory of expressive means of painting.

Siim-Tanel Annus, Rein Kelpman

The approaches of Siim-Tanel Annus could be described in a similar way to the previous artists. He, too, did not decisively change his nature when the new winds came, but continued his conceptual studies. The pyramidal forms constantly refer to the search for a certain sacred dimension that does not exactly rhyme with any religion, but with a broader metaphysical perception of life. To look for something higher than the everyday, to push away the banal Wednesday - this kind of approach turned its back on the dynamics of the 90s, when the struggle for existence and specifically the struggle for everyday survival had conquered the streets, shops and newspaper headlines.  

Rein Kelpman connects well with Annus's abstract painting solutions, but only through form. Kelpman's somewhat naivistic creations had already attracted attention when the author casually looked at the slums and the different types living in them, doing so with a certain pleasant smile. However, the 1990s in the author's vision were central to spaces and perceptions, when geometric cuts articulated the visible and invisible world - squares on paintings, behind which other more distant squares, cubes and triangles shone. Kelpman's paintings seem to yearn to move beyond the ability of the eye, to live without borders, at a time when direct borders had ceased to exist. It was in this decade that Kelpman's paintings were pop, they were placed in spacious offices and homes, paintings that did not commit to anything and simply let the viewer be at their own pace.

Paul Allik

Paul Allik continued in his old style, but the vividness of his colors interestingly connected with the optimism of the new era. Allik was a convinced admirer of the classical principles of painting, but his improvisational brushwork, free approach to form and intensified general color did not allow himself to be too much harassed by examples and traditions. In this way, his works fit surprisingly well with the work of newcomers Mall Nukke and Marko Mäetamme.

Marko Mäetamm, Mall Nukke

These two were the innovators of painting in the 90s, the bringers of neo-pop and the creators of personal painting that connects with social changes and at the same time witty. There has never been too much humor in Estonian art, but the playful works of Nukke and Mäetamme did not strike a chord. Their techniques were also playful: instead of dignified canvases and oil paints, they used plexiglass, collage, mixtures of different techniques, and so on. However, the images, figures and symbols used almost came from newspapers - instead of staring at eternity, every last drop was squeezed from everyday life.

PHOTOGRAPHY

DeStudio, Herkki-Erich Merila

Photography went through the opposite journey in terms of attention and status compared to painting. In the 1980s, photographers operated in separate clubs outside art galleries, and photography was not accepted as art. But in the 1990s, everything changed. There were many reasons for this, but mainly the DeStudio (Herkki-Erich Merila and Peeter Laurits) exhibitions in the first half of the 1990s must be highlighted. Having emerged with large and powerful works, DeStudio no longer approached photography narrowly, but the image as such, and in an era when everything was constantly changing, they realized that there is no longer a whole. For this reason, they often built their works from fragments, it is as if their works are first scattered into fragments and then glued back together in a new assembly. Not only the images were split, but also the identities - one of DeStudio's best-known works depicts the self-portraits of Merila and Lauritsa, but instead of a complete face, we see a fragmented collage. At the same time, both Merila and Laurits were also very well acquainted with the various technological solutions of photography. In the 1980s, both experimented with pinhole photography, which seems dreamy and poetic. Even then, Merila started with a new way of depicting the body, which only reached the work of other authors in the 1990s - he depicted male nudes, and instead of posing naked, we see groups of people in an abstract environment.

GRAPHICS

Siim-Tanel Annus, Leonhard Lapin, Raul Meel, Silvi Liiva

Graphics had remained at a consistently high level since the 1960s and did not lose their high standards even in the 1990s. Siim-Tanel Annus, Leonhard Lapin, Raul Meel and Silvi Liiva were leading graphic artists already, although each of them approached art in their own way. Myths of the world found their place in Lapin's abundant creations - the cover image of this work is from Greek mythology, but interpreted conceptually and at the same time slightly erotically, typical of Lapin. Raul Meele's conceptualism had attracted wide international interest a long time ago. Meanings born from rhythmicity and repetition, which are also political - Meel uses images related to Estonia - remained relevant even in the 1990s. On the other hand, Silvi Liiva was more poetic on the surface, but there is also a certain seriousness and even darkness in her works. Philosophical devotions and attitudes unfold in the middle of delicate images. Annus’s pages are inspired by his trip to Japan. Japan has reached Estonian art before, for example, Evald Okas has several Japanese-themed graphic pages, but Annus is more general and abstract. He does not document travel impressions, but finds some greater truth and recognition, which also connects with his own inner searches.

VIDEO

Jaan Toomik

Video art became the new art genre of the new era, and its most important author was Jaan Toomik, whose work immediately attracted unprecedented international attention. Today, his works belong to several private and museum collections all over the world. Like Raul Meel, Toomik often played with repetitions and amplifying seemingly random coincidences. Combining heartbeats and church bells was characteristically existential and sacred at the same time for Toomik, combining two such fundamental dimensions, but all this in the context of a miserable everyday life. In some ways, he could even be compared to Dostoevsky: lying in the dirt looking at the stars...