You are welcome to the opening of the exhibition “Chatty Matter” and to the performance by Age Linkmann and Taavi Rei on Friday, 8th of February at 6.00 pm at Kogo Gallery.

In the broadest sense, this exhibition looks at the material culture and the stories, meanings, and transformations that lie in it. There has been a long tradition in society to admire objects of tangible culture from the past, but how do we connect with objects in our contemporary society that surrounds us daily? This exhibition explores the social stories, hopes, and desires that have settled in the matter around us. Artists are like anthropologists who study the different meanings of things through form, materials, usage functions and socio-cultural histories.

What kind of expectations, and meanings tie us with things around? And how does one influence his own perceptions, understandings, and habits through the material things he constantly creates around him? In our daily lives, things play an important role in both material and immaterial ways. We fetish their utilitarian or aesthetic qualities, but rarely think about their possible additional meanings and hidden potentials. “Chatty Matter” is based on visual and tactical research on things that have lost their function, or which function is unknown or yet undiscovered. What purposes, meanings, and ways of being manifest in things that surround us every day, when we remove the ideological meanings and utility functions attributed by man?

Artists are fascinated by situations where objects have lost their purpose or commute between function and aesthetics. Through the study of decorative semi-functional things, Saarits investigates objects in which the social desirability of success and dreams of consumerism have materialized. By observing the origin stories of different things, she also analyses the topic of “thingliness” and the ontological meanings of things in a wider context. Mertes however, combines special types of materials and parts of commodities and is engaged in rethinking the perceptions and everyday habits related to things around us. Emphasizing on the material presence of the work of art and having the desire to abandon the semantic baggage of things and materials, she thus opens up their new possible meanings and uses.

Graphic design: Aleksandra Samulenkova (LV/NL)

Thanks to: Club-Mate Eesti, Trükikoda Paar, Looming Hostel, Siim Preiman, Ingrid Allik, Brita Kaasik, Taavi Rei, Age Linkmann, Darja Andrejeva, Lauri Lest, Helena Keskküla, Kadri Villand, Eva-Erle Lilleaed, Mati Schönberg, Marten Esko.

The exhibition is supported by The Cultural Endowment of Estonia; the gallery is supported by the city of Tartu.

You are cordially invited to the opening of Eva Mustonen’s solo exhibition Spider-Woman on Friday, December 14 at 6 pm in Kogo Gallery.

Deriving from the myths related to weaving (both ancient and contemporary), Eva Mustonen offers a prosaic version of tapestry as a niche and archaic textile art form. At the exhibition Spider-Woman the artist lays her creative process directly in front of the viewer. While staying at the gallery during the exhibition, the artist will be dying the yarns and weaving them into a tapestry on the looms. The day by day weaving will be accompanied by the artist’s past years interviews with Estonian tapestry artists as well as her own diary excerpts and texts that concern the history of tapestry art and it’s position in the contemporary art world, illustrating self ironically, how seemingly simple and technically easily mastered tapestry weaving can turn out to be a much more complicated affair.

Eva Mustonen (1986) studied textile design and semiotics in Tartu and Gothenburg and sculpture in Tallinn. She is currently living and working in Tallinn.

Today, Mustonen works mainly as an installation artist. 
In her projects personal narratives dominate that speak 
of being different, living somewhere in the margins of society. In her work, 
she combines both the techniques of the textile design and 
the products of everyday acts and doings. Mustonen’s works stand out because of her usage of tightly crafted and recognisable materials and unexpectedly beautiful mystical objects. The artist seems to be inspired by everyday simplicity, the marvellous abundance of second-hand shops 
and the history of women artists. Mustonen could be seen 
and thought about as a feminist, in which the private can 
often have a political dimension.

Exhibition is supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Gambling Tax Council, Punch Drinks

Starting from November 30, Kristi Kongi’s and Mari-Leen Kiipli’s duo exhibition Secret Wistle in the Forest is accompanied by a poetry installation created by poets Hasso Krull, Carolina Pihelgas and multimedia artist Martin Rästa. The installation consists of different poem fragments that do not replace the forest sounds but rather create a forest like room from three different sound directions. Words appear and disappear unexpectedly, only rising up for a while with the help of silence, that prevails over the speech. The poetry installation is in Estonian and together with the exhibition it will remain open until December 8.

You are cordially invited to the opening of Kristi Kongi’s and Mari-Leen Kiipli’s duo exhibition Secret Whistle in the Forest on October 24 at 7pm in Kogo gallery.

The exhibition is inspired by light, shadow and the idea of blurring the boundaries between different life forms. Artists create a magical space where visitors can perceive life in itself, as a self-organized substantial network.

The painting installation by KRISTI KONGI is a geographical labyrinth of light that grasps different places, from Mexican jungle to South–Estonian forests. Due to the metaphor of light, the borders between humans and plants become obscure. The forest grows into the source of utopian geometry and fear becomes equal with heat. The light turns people into plants in the process of post-humanist evolution.
Kristi Kongi (1985) studied painting in Tartu, Tallinn, and Lahti, she currently lives and works in Tallinn. The central theme, material, and inspiration of Kongi’s art practice is color. The visual language of her paintings, which are easy to define as examples of geometric abstraction, revolves around systemic studies of light and color, being in particular analytic and organized.

In her videos, MARI-LEEN KIIPLI perceives ways of standing between light and shadow, uncertainty and suspense. She explores blurred existential encounters between different forms of life and grasps the subject in the flow of relations with multiple others.
Mari-Leen Kiipli (1988) studied photography in Tartu and Tallinn, did an exchange in Vienna and currently lives and works in Tallinn. Kiipli combines photography, video, and installation, she focuses on the cognitive qualities of spaces and situations. In her work, she closely observes her presence in specific environments and the functioning of the body’s memory.

Kristi Kongi’s and Mari-Leen Kiipli’s duo exhibition Secret Whistle in the Forest is part of the architectural lighting design and light art festival Tartu Valgus | Tartu in Light satellite program. In addition to Kogo gallery, exhibition Vacuum as a Mindset will also open in the evening of October 24 simultaneously in two galleries – in Tartu Art Houseat 5pm and in Gallery Noorus at 6pm. The opening evening program continues in the Widget Factory (Aparaaditehas) where Kogo gallery’s exhibition Secret Whistle in the Forest will open at 7pm. Opening evening ends with a live concert by the main artist of the exhibition Vacuum as a Mindset Carl Michael von Hausswolff, at 9pm in the Hall of Love at Aparaaditehas.

As part of the Tartu in Light festival Kogo galleryis exceptionally open 12pm–10pm from October 25 until October 28.

The exhibition is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Pühaste Brewery, Saku and A. Le Coq.

Thanks to Tartu Art Museum, Tartu Art House

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.

Exhibition is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia.