On 14 May painter Kristi Kongi’s solo exhibition “Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real?” opens at Kogo contemporary art gallery at the Tartu Widget Factory. The exhibition speaks of unfolding, awareness of place and recollection where colours have a central role.

Kristi Kongi writes, “When I think of colours and where they come from, they are usually connected with specific places. I have usually experienced these places on my way to or from somewhere.
During the last few years, as I travel around, I have written down the names of colours. I have discovered that by describing these places in this way, according to colours, my recollection of the experience is more precise and truer.

The exhibition “Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real?” includes oil paintings on canvas and a painting installation that extends into the gallery space. The oil paintings were completed between spring 2020 and spring 2021. The exhibition is open from 14 May to 19 June 2021.

Kristi Kongi is represented by Kogo Gallery and has participated in two previous exhibitions at the gallery – in 2018 “Secret Whistle in the Forest” with Mari-Leen Kiipli and in 2020 the group exhibition “Time to Dream or Fear?”. This exhibition is Kristi Kongi’s first solo show at Kogo Gallery.

“Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real?” is the second exhibition in the gallery’s program this year – “Ecology–Economy” – which addresses various sensitive issues in ecology and the economy.

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment, the City of Tartu and Akzo Nobel
Thanks to: Angeliina Liivlaid, Maria Hommik, Urmo Teekivi, Elena Past, Argo Otsma, Tanel Paliale, Ahti Lill, Eike Eplik.

Kristi Kongi (born in 1985) is a painter and installation artist whose work focuses on colour, light, and space. Her bright coloured paintings often take the form of impressive installations created for specific settings. Besides painting on canvas, plywood, walls, floors and ceiling, she also uses various cloured materials like fabrics, plexiglass to create her painting installations.
Specific places that the artist has visited or inhabited and her observations, emotions and memories are often the base of her paintings and installations. She likes to create space-in-space situations by transferring those memory-places to the exhibition space by self-invented transformations-systems. The latter arises from the painting experiments where Kristi tests different questions related to colour, light and shadow. Kristi has named those experiments “Exercises With the Moon” – an example of a poetic name, a kind of her paintings and installations often bear.
Kristi Kongi studied painting at Tartu Art College (BA, 2004-2008) and graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts painting department (MA, 2008-2011). She has been awarded Young Artist Prize (2011), Sadolin Art Prize (2013), Konrad Mägi Prize (2017) and nominated for the Köler Prize (2016). She is an associate professor at the Estonian Academy of Arts painting department.

Kogo gllery participates this year for the first time at Liste Art Fair Basel. The gallery exhibits works by two Estonian artists Mari-Leen Kiipli and Eike Eplik.

“With an innovative exhibition programme, Kogo Gallery has set its heart on introducing the younger generation of artists in particular. The invitation to participate in this year’s Liste is an international recognition of the work that has been done – it is a remarkable achievement to be part of Liste just three years after the gallery’s founding. The fact that it is only the fourth time for a gallery from the Baltics to participate in the fair highlights the regional importance of the occasion even more so,” comments Karin Laansoo, Director of Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center.

Liste Art Fair Basel is an international fair with a focus on the younger generation of galleries. The fair’s 26th edition takes place on September 20–26, 2021, in Basel, Switzerland, parallel to Art Basel.

Kogo gallery presents works of two Estonian artists Mari-Leen Kiipli and Eike Eplik, who are both deeply fascinated by nature and its complicated relationship with humankind. The stand will be built as a greenhouse serving both as a metaphor for a fantastic escapism garden and place of care as well as a symbol of human control and our overheating planet. The gallery will present videos by Mari-Leen Kiipli and sculptural works by both artists, all accompanied by living plants. On the online platform Liste Showtime, the gallery presents Mari-Leen Kiipli and her works.

The participation at the art fair is funded by the Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center and European Regional Development Fund.

Due to the current restrictions, Kogo gallery is closed, yet the solo exhibition Reimagining the Old Slopes by an Estonian artist Holger Loodus can be now viewed from outside. On-site, there is an audioguide and instructions, theatre binoculars and disinfector, the exhibition space is illuminated, the gallery is on the ground floor and block-shaped enabling to see the whole space.

Kogo gallery in collaboration with the artist Holger Loodus created an audioguide providing insight into each artwork at the exhibition Reimagining the Old Slopes. A visitor can listen to the audioguide on his/her phone; floorplan helps to navigate in the space; names of the audio files and artworks are the same. The texts are written and the Estonian version also narrated by the artist himself, the English version is narrated by Michael Haagensen.

• The exhibition space is illuminated 24 hours from Wednesday to Sunday each week until the doors can be opened again.
• There are two pairs of theatre binoculars enabling to observe also details of the artworks. The visitors are kindly asked to disinfect the binoculars before using them.
• The exhibition can be viewed outside independently, team members of the gallery are not present.
• The exhibition by Holger Loodus will remain open to date unknown.
• For a distanced exhibition experience, audioguide can be combined with photos of artworks and exhibition views.

With the exhibition “Reimagining Those Old Slopes”, the artist Holger Loodus modernises the hill of purgatory created by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri at the beginning of the 14th century. He aims to look at how a mystical object loses its moralizing content to become an easily acceptable attractive design object. The exhibition consists of oil paintings, photographs, projections and objects. Along with the exhibition comes the publication with visual material compiled by Holger Loodus and the text by Tanel Rander.

Holger Loodus’ solo show “Reimagining Those Old Slopes” is the first exhibition in the Kogo gallery’s exhibition program entitled Ecology – Economy, as a kind of ‘vibe’ – a general area that only seems to attract more discussion during these turbulent times. Through its program in 2021 Kogo gallery aims to address this complex relationship both directly and metaphorically through projects including solo exhibitions as well as international group shows and collaborative projects.

The graphic designer of the exhibition and publication is Aleksandra Samulenkova.
The texts were written by Tanel Rander; edited and translated by Refiner Translations.
Thanks: Katrin Enni, Tanel Paliale, Andres Teiss, Iris Vilu, Ivika Holm, Georg Kaasik, Kaie and Rein Loodus.
The exhibition and publication are supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment and the City of Tartu.