Soil Will Not Contain Our Love, Kai Art Centre, Tallinn
-
selected works
View: ,
'Your hands are hovering in the air, I go'
acrylic, canvas 60×45cm 2016
'What do You Say, What do You Say'
acrylic, canvas 92×58cm 2016
'Sad but sad'
acrylic on canvas 200×150cm 2017
'The best rubber gloves for your cleaning needs, the best rubber gloves for clearing weeds, the best rubber gloves for the best rest'
acrylic, canvas 61×46cm 2017
'Collapse of the system'
oil on canvas 61×46cm 2017
'The heat '
acrylic, canvas 61×45cm 2018
'I thought you needed that host body, to spread and multiply'
acrylic, canvas 61×45cm 2018
'Mother of Pearls'
acrylic, oil, canvas 61×45cm 2019
'Trapped in Memory and Lost in Gaze'
acrylic, oil, canvas 61×45cm 2019
'Floaters'
oil, glass 53×39cm 2021
'Flowers are growing on my grave, trees are growing on my grave'
painting on tempered glass 200×150cm 2019
'Selection of 'Daily paintings' (2018) and 'Hedgehog family walk' (1985)'
plywood screen, mixed media drawings, paintings on paper 2022
'Funeral during a thunderstorm'
painting on glass 2022
'Ghost of the future, filled with memories of past '
bathtub made of hand-painted ceramic tiles 68×147×78cm 2019
'Forever Together'
acrylic and oil on canvas 61×45cm 2020
'Girl with a peephole and two face tattoos'
oil pastel, acrylic, mdf board 52×36cm 2019
'Ocean of Endangered Times'
acrylic, canvas 600×400cm 2019
installation views
View: ,
Merike Estna‘s solo exhibition Soil will not contain our love will be on view from August 19 to November 27, 2022. The exhibition has been conceived as a mini-retrospective of the artist’s work, showing her new series as well as several pieces that will be shown in Estonia for the first time. The latter include Estna’s large-scale painting The Ocean of Endangered Times, created for the 2019 Moderna Museet Malmö exhibition, and the hand-woven, large-scale rug The House of the Tragic Poet, commissioned for a solo exhibition at Bosse & Baum Gallery in London in 2021, among several others.
For Kai the artist has created a multilayered environment of personal archaeology that includes installations made from textile, beeswax, wood, glass, and ceramics, as well as paintings and sound. Merike Estna is known as a bold experimenter with the medium of painting who is masterfully creating stages and spaces for an audience to inhabit. This Kai exhibition stands out for its experimental use of materials – Estna has experimented with embroidery as well as burning both on textile and on wood, for example. Combining time-consuming and traditional techniques with materials and themes of contemporary art, Soil will not contain our love is inspired by traditional Estonian folklore and craft, creating a mesmerizing ambience.
Merike Estna is one of the most important contemporary artists in Estonia whose ongoing exploration of painting as a creative work and mode of expression is based on both a critical and conceptual approach and a deep respect for her craft. Over the last 7 years, the artist’s focus has been on international projects, as evidenced by solo exhibitions at Bosse & Baum Gallery (London), Karen Huber Gallery (Mexico City), Art in General satellite program for the Performa Biennial (New York), Kunstraum (London), kim? Art Centre (Riga), Kiasma (Helsinki) and Moderna Museet Malmö (Malmö). This large-scale solo exhibition at Kai Art Center is the artist’s first major institutional solo project in Estonia since her solo exhibition at Kumu in 2014.
Curator: Karin Laansoo
Exhibition design: Merike Estna
Exhibition design consultant: Tõnu Narro
Installation: Tehniline Direktor – Tõnu Narro, Mihkel Lember + Erik Liiv, Olavi Sander, Marten Esko, Dénes Farkas, Valdis Vesilind & Ellen Vene
Production assistant: Sonja Cooper
Graphic Design: Martina Gofman
Supporters: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tallinn Department of Culture and Sports, AS Vestman Energia, Estonian Centre of Folk Culture
Special thanks: Tallinn Zoo, Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, Bosse & Baum, Galeria Karen Huber, Evelyn Raudsepp, Andreas Nilsson, Olga Temnikova, Lilian Hiob, Maria Arusoo, Jaanus Samma, Aime Estna, Jaime Lobato, Kristi Kongi, Inbank, Vincent Honore, Painting Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Kseniia Buzhbetskaya, Põhjala brewery