Kogo Gallery is pleased to announce Elīna Vītola’s solo exhibition Common Issues in Painting and Everyday Life – Crapstraction at our Tartu gallery space. This marks the Latvian artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and Vītola’s first solo exhibition in Estonia.
Elīna Vītola studied painting in Riga, where she currently lives and works. Painting, the picturesque and the points where they connect with everyday triviality are central issues in the oeuvre of Vītola. The artist approaches colors, objects and painting as a whole in a conceptual way, pitching humorous questions about its subject matter, technique and material. Vītola has pointed out that she is interested in art and canned fruits — this phrase could be taken as a key handed to the viewer to unlock her art works.
Exhibition caption Common Issues In Painting and Everyday Life – Crapstraction, the word “crapstraction” is a synonym for Zombie Formalism, which characterizes the revival of abstractionism. The current exhibition is the newest chapter of Vītola’s 28 year long ongoing research project “How to become an artist?”. The exhibition consists of artist’s various attempts to find solutions to problems that she as an abstract artist is facing in her everyday life and in the process of painting. While searching for a way to become successful as an artist, Vītola is looking at different stereotypes that are associated with art and artists, through which she tries to demystify the painting process itself.
Kogo Gallery announces an open call for 2019 exhibitions!
Through open call we are looking for one solo exhibition and one curatorial project for our 2019 exhibition program. We are expecting contemporary art projects that fit with the gallery’s space, identity and program, and which show clear artist or curatorial position. International exhibition projects are also welcome. Exhibition duration is 4-6 weeks.
Kogo Gallery is a contemporary art gallery opened in spring 2018 in the Widget Factory (Aparaaditehas) in Tartu. The Aim of the gallery is to represent emerging artists with their local and international visibility.
Application should consist of:
– detailed description of the proposed exhibition
– preferred time for exhibition
– names of the participants, CV-s, portfolios (either digitally or links to websites)
– contact details of the organiser (phone number, e-mail)
Applications should be sent on e-mail address kogo@kogogallery.ee
Deadline: November 1, 2018
Participating artists:
Anna Mari Liivrand, GolfClayderman, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Kristel Saan, Laura Põld
Curated by Merilin Talumaa
Anna Mari Liivrand (1993) is based in Tallinn. Liivrand’s works combine different mediums such as installation, sculpture and drawing while engaging with fragility and different preservation practices through which she tries to unfold the intrinsicity of the objects and capture moments of clarity in everyday life.
GolfClayderman is based in Latvia. Unlimited liability company GolfClayderman is a multipurpose organisation established in 2016. It encompasses all spheres of life and looks after the improvement of their quality. The collective’s core consists of Margrieta Griestiņa and Aksels Bruks. Both members studied at the Department of Visual Communication of the Art Academy of Latvia. GolfClayderman are active in a multitude of fields of art and life – performance, music, theatre, lifestyle, fashion, body art, and others.
Jaakko Pallasvuo (1987) is based in Helsinki. Pallasvuo makes videos, texts, performances and installations that explore the anxieties of being alive now, and the prospect of living in some possible future.
Kristel Saan (1985) is based in Tallinn and Vancouver. Saan’s field of study is questioning body experiences in a visually supercharged world, based on the personal archives that we all have, and the encountered exchange as it’s result – looking into suspension of the superstition in the utopian space.
Laura Põld (1984) is based in Tallinn and Vienna. Põld is mainly working with poetics of ‘place’. The combination of mediums such as painting, installation, ceramics, video, and text become staged landscapes in symbiosis with the gallery space, and sometimes environments for interactive performative experimentation.
Exhibition is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tartmus, Kuma Kombucha, A. Le Coq
Kogo gallery is glad to invite you to the contemporary art fair ArtVilnius’18 from 7th till 10th of June 2018 in Vilnius.
Kogo gallery will present works by three artists:
Alexei Gordin (1989) studied painting in Tallinn and Helsinki and currently lives and works in Tallinn.
Elīna Vītola (1986) studied painting in Riga, where she currently lives and works.
Eva Mustonen (1986) studied textile design and semiotics in Tartu and Gothenburg and sculpture in Tallinn. She is currently living and working in Tallinn.
ArtVilnius’18
LITEXPO Lithuanian Exhibition and Congress Centre
Laisves av. 5, Vilnius, Lithuania
Halls: 3, 4, 5
Opening hours:
Thursday, 7 June 12pm–3pm by invitation
Thursday, 7 June 3pm–8pm NB! opening party from 6pm
Friday & Saturday, 8–9 June 11.30am–8pm
Sunday, 10 June 11.30am–6pm
The idea about the death of art is as dead as art itself. Such post-mortem condition, no living creature is able to experience. Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must speculate.
Alexei Gordin decided to remain silent – speculatively silent. The word “speculate” originates from the word “mirror” (speculum). As Gordin says, conscious silence creates an uncomfortable feeling that makes silence resonate. Such silence, however, is not calming and meditative. Such silence may be felt as complete dissonance.
Gordin has previously made a video where he runs through an abandoned city with a slogan “Buy My Works!”. In the same way, he gives an inaudible speech in the abandoned Tallinn City Hall, constructing both subtitles and the audience’s response to it.
The same way institutional art exists constructing a spectacle of art – starting with artist and art and ending with a reception and archives. There is probably some kind of statistics that confirms us that we live in a very art-conscious society.
Text by: Tanel Rander
Alexei Gordin (born 1989) studied painting in Tallinn and Helsinki and currently lives and works in Tallinn.
Although he has a background as a painter, Gordin fluently uses different media and works with drawing, photography, video and performance. The main subject matter of his artistic practice is absurdly stereotypical thinking and behaviour patterns of people in contemporary mass society.
Gordin’s works are almost always narrative in nature and often cover exciting or annoying situations. In the early years of his career, filthy slums, empty industrial landscapes, marginalised and stigmatised social groups, and vulgar jokes constituted the core atmosphere of Gordin’s work.
The harsh reality of the art world has now become one of his main topics and the artist has himself become the protagonist. Scenes scattered with black humour deconstruct the image of the professional art world as something elitist and glamorous.
Gordin has won several photography competitions and in 2017 he was awarded the Young Painters’ Prize in Vilnius.
The opening event of Kogo Gallery. The artists who will all have their solo or duo exhibition in the gallery during 2018 will together take over the new space in their own personal manner by creating either connections or headstrong oppositions between each other. Elīna Vītola presents the viewer with humorous observations about the connections that abstract art has with everyday life and politics, while Kristi Kongi focuses on systematic research into light, colour and senses. Social, personal and existential are represented in Alexei Gordin’s adventures in the art world but also in Diana Tamane’s sensitive approaches to the stories from her family history. Eva Mustonen and Mari-Leen Kiipli will work together to create an installation that will place the viewer face-to-face with bizarre found and invented objects. The gallery becomes a viewing and reading room where the visitors are invited to spend their time and to acquaint themselves with the works of the artists.
