Ivar Kaasik has for many years lived in Berlin. He left Estonia in 1990s and has ever since worked as a jeweller. His large oil paintings reflect author\'s close contact with contemporary visual culture.
Ivar Kaasik (1965) can obviously be classified to belong among \"the lost
sons\". Among those, who were born and who started their studies in Estonia, but
whose life later was mainly spent abroad. Kaasik is not a foreign Estonian in
its classical sense, his departure was not a forced one and the return would
have been at the first sight an easy procedure. But there are several reasons,
why he is still walking along the streets of Berlin. One of them is his creation
that talks to the things, which are happening in the capital of modern art and
which have no equivalent in Estonia.Actually there even does not exist a
language, in which to talk about them.
Still, everything started so politely. In the
beginning of the 1980ies Kaasik studied architecture in the ESAI, but swithced
the speciality in the middle of the decade and graduated from the Institute in
1992 as a metal artist. Already then we could have found him one year in Halle,
where Kaasik studied in the art and design university. After graduating from the
ESAI took place an already decisive turn: the artist left Estonia and is today
already a member of a German artists\' association. For Kaasik, who works as a
jeweller, the current exposition of paintings is still not the first one: he has
participated in exhibitions since the year 1988, incl. his hometown
Kuressaare.
At the present exhibition it is possible
to see 16 large-format oil paintings that have been painted within the last two
years. At the first glance we are dealing with portraits, but which portraits
really! A boy in a sailor\'s shirt stares at us intensively, a woman\'s face that
is fog-covered can hardly be detached from the background, and there are also a
large number of dogs. According to the words of Kaasik for himself there exists
no essential difference between an animal and a man, anima and humana: animals
are humans and vice versa. But the way, how such experience as the truth is
brought to the viewer, deserves additional attention.
Works of Kaasik are paintings, being
simultaneously cliches and old stereotypes in their immortal nudity, but
at the same time equally aware of their position and ready to use it as much as
possible. Highly effective surface handling and extremely essence-true approach
is only a step away from a postcard, but this step is a significant one.
Kaasik\'s paintings are as being in love in themselves in a narcissistic manner,
but they are also very well aware of it. The author does not use any
painting technique-related \"tricks\", also he does not detach in panic from the
visual culture of the modern society, even though he undoubtedly has the
possibilities for both forms of action. Kaasik is not interested in escaping. He
is here. Largely, uproaringly and lethally beautifully.