Chamber Of Freedom With Integrated Memory Hole, installation 2011

http://www.modernamuseet.se/en/Malmo/Exhibitions/2014/The-Moderna-Exibition-2014/

A Work Commissioned from the Painter Tõnis Saadoja by Visible Solutions LLC, oil on canvas 2014

http://www.ekkm.ee/naitused/koler-prize-2014-nominentide-naitus/

The Köler Prize is an art prize that was founded by the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) in 2011. Every year, five artists or art groups of Estonian descent or permanently residing in Estonia are nominated based on their work during the last three years. The nominees for the 2013 Köler Prize are Jass Kaselaan, Kiwa, Kärt Ojavee, Johannes Säre and Visible Solutions LLC.

The artists submit two works of their own choosing to the exhibition. One work that has been exhibited previously, preferably produced during the last three years, which could be considered to be a work that defines the artist’s practice. The other should be a new work that is produced especially for the Köler Prize or one that has not been previously exhibited in Estonia. An international panel of judges will choose the winner of the Köler Prize based on the works in the exhibition and the artist’s portfolio. Members of the Köler Prize 2014 jury are: Jaanus Samma, Estonian artist and the winner of Köler Prize 2013; René Block, German gallerist and curator, currently the director of Kunstall Moen44 in Denmark; Taru Elvfing, director of the FRAME Foundation in Helsinki and the curator of Finnish Pavillion at the Venice biennale in 2015; Mari Laanemets, Estonian art historian and curator and Magda Kardasz, Polish curator working at the Zacheta gallery in Warssaw. The public will also have the opportunity to choose its favorite at the exhibition. Thus, the main award and the people’s choice award will be announced at the gala to take place on May 30^th. Thereafter, the exhibition will remain open for few more weeks.

The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue (edited by Andreas Trossek and designed by Indrek Sirkel) and documentary about the nominated artists (film is done by Anders Härm, Reimo Võsa Tangsoo, Raul Tõnurist and Jevgeni Berežovski)

There are many art prizes in Estonia that are awarded on the basis of annual output, such as the Cultural Endowment awards. There are also many that are directed at young artists as well as those for an artist’s life’s work. There are national cultural awards, including ones for art. The Köler Prize is intended for active artists without imposing any age limits. The nominees are artists that have demonstrated stability for a long period; who have shown that they have coherently and definitively pursued a specific line of practice. They are not “one hit wonders” or true classics either. They have unrealized or partially realized international potential and they are currently doing significant things in the Estonian art world.

There are several awards in Estonia that have been named after art classics. In addition to the fact that Köler rhymes with Turner, we were motivated to name the award after Köler in order to have our award “predate” the other awards and to virtually place Köler Prize before the Kristjan Raud Prize, Konrad Mägi Medal, and Eduard Viiralt Prize. The link to the 19^th-century Estonian painter Johann Köler is mostly limited to this. In the local context, the Köler Prize is special because the prize is accompanied by a nominees’ exhibition and it is awarded based largely on a successful presentation at this exhibition. Like last two year, the Köler Prize is again sponsored by Smarten Logistics. People’s Choice Award is sponsored by SALTO architects.

This year is the fourth time that the Köler Prize will be awarded. In 2011, the Grand Prix was won by Jevgeni Zolotko and Tõnis Saadoja won the Public’s Choice Award. In 2013 Flo Kasearu won both the Grand Prix and People`s Choice Award. Indeed, Marge Monko`s ouevre was also considered worthy of honorary mentioning by the jury. Last year Jaanus Samma won also both the Grand Prix and the People’s Choice Award

Press release prepared by
Anders Härm
Member of the Board of EKKM

More information
Tel: +372 50 84 570
e-mail: anders@ekkm.ee
www.ekkm.ee

Exhibition view, courtesy of Tatiana May Kallergi, Angeliki Roussou

http://theartfoundation.metamatic.gr/EN/Event/2259/Exodic/

Exodus and the exotic / the transformative modalities of exoticism

metamatic:taf is excited to host the exhibition Exodic, which opens on Thursday 6 February at 20.30 and will run until 2 March 2014.

Exodic attempts to bring together two seemingly distant notions, exodus, as defined by Paolo Virno, and the exotic. The exhibition provides an experimental conceptual ground for the two notions to be presented and discussed in light of current developments on a local and international basis. The notion of the exotic is perceived as a potential mode of relating to something foreign. Specifically, the exhibition addresses the mythologising and flirtatious aspects in exoticising what derives from an unfamiliar outside. Defining exodus, Virno rejects the political resistance that comes from an alleged sphere outside the existing social structures and he suggests a turn to exogenous parameters that can give birth to a new arrangement.

“Exodus is the transfer to political praxis of the heuristic procedure, [. . .] which the mathematicians define as ‘variation of data’: giving precedence to secondary or heterogeneous factors, we move gradually from a determined problem: subjection or insurrection, to a totally different problem: how to realize a defection and to experience forms of self-government which were previously inconceivable” (P.Virno, Jokes and Innovative Action, 2008)*

The relationship between the two discussed notions can be found in a web of conceptual threads. Exodus itself might seem exotic in the sense that it is an unfamiliar process of exiting certain comfort zones. Exodus also seems to be realisable on a grassroots level which makes it something rare in its nature. Thus, exodus can fall prey to mythologising and stereotyping forces in the same sense that something exotic does. Departing from the theoretical concept of exodus without seeking visualisations of it, the exhibition deals with the notion of the exotic as a mode of relating to “heterogeneous factors”. In doing so, it does not adopt an escapist attitude; it wonders about the transformative modalities of exoticism.

The international group of participating artists is effectively situated on the grey zone of what is taken to be western or non-western, northern or southern and exotic or non-exotic. Each one of the works relates to the subject on a different level and all the works together initiate unexpected dialogues, open to interpretation by the viewer. The show is staged in a subtly cinematic approach that plays with the stereotypical exotic imagery and its re-appropriation through the internet and new media. As this oxymoron of reducing to familiar forms (stereotypes or myths) unfamiliar images (the exotic) is widespread in the show, humour is also employed as a device to experiment with the implicated meanings and forms.

The prefix exo- (outside) resides within the words exotic and exodus

*Paolo Virno, Jokes and Innovative Action (Los Angeles/New York: Semiotext(e), 2008

Participating artists: Konstantinos Kotsis, Lucky PDF, Sotiris Bakagiannis, Paul Souviron, Superflex and Jens Haaning, Maria Tzanakou, Petros Touloudis, Visible Solutions LLC

Curated by: Tatiana May Kallergi, Angeliki Roussou

http://www.steirischerherbst.at/2013/english/calendar/calendar.php?eid=17

Things clear up in retrospect, they say. What was eclipsed by the gravity of events becomes visible later: causes, reasons, connections, culprits. But is that really so? Today, for example, five years after the outbreak of the biggest post-war financial and economic crisis, have we really learned anything? Have we understood the pathologies that can be unleashed by an alliance of democracy and market economy that we learned to see as part of the natural order and without alternative after the fall of the Wall? Have we really understood the financial turn, with all its consequences, its devastating effects for the global economy, but also for democracy and human rights, that dramatic shift from real to finance industry, in which assets, concrete and abstract alike, are created and destroyed in fractions of a second? Do we know how to get out of it again?
But then why is no end of the calamity in sight? Why don’t we even draw clear conclusions from the sheer violence that goes hand in hand with finance capitalism? And why – despite all the experts constantly explaining the world to us in talk-shows and at round-table conferences – do we seem to lack words when we try to put what is happening to us in a nutshell?
The international exhibition “Liquid Assets” focuses on these mysteries, the ineffable and the obscure, the opacities and the shady sides of an economic and financial system that no longer can explain itself. In order to explore the secrets and logics of free-flowing global cash flows with the devices of art, in order perhaps to understand a bit better how money and debt morality can define and deform interpersonal relationships.

The catalogue “Liquid Assets” (Mousse Publishing) with texts by Katerina Gregos, Luigi Fassi & Christian Marazzi and contributions by all participating artists, will be published on September 20.

http://manifesta9.org/

http://www.ekkm.ee/en/naitused/museum-files-i-collected-principles/

 
MUSEUM FILES I: COLLECTED PRINCIPLES
June 19 – July 17, 2011

Opening Reception on Saturday, June 18th at 6 pm

The collection of EKKM, which, like every living collection, is continually supplemented is however not an ordinary public or private collection, for both conceptual reasons related to the institutional practices of EKKM and purely material reasons related to the lack of money. Firstly, EKKM has never had any budget for collecting and EKKM also has relatively little depository space for storing the collection, not to mention the proper conditions for preservation. Yet, we didn`t want to get the artists’ works for free or to engage in blackmail like the Soviet-era “art beggars”. Therefore, EKKM collects primarily, but not exclusively, intangibly — at the idea level. The collection is a conceptual set of works, ideas and matter, the majority of which is acquired through symbolic exchanges if not the artists have decided to donate the works. In many cases, the artists have been paid with resources that are detached from ordinary economic activities by using a barter system, or by using agreement that are reached for acquiring the works of art in some other way.

The acquisition of works can be roughly divided into the following three groups:

a) through a conceptual transaction between the artist and institution;’
b) strategic commissions by the institution;
c) donations and deposits.

The exhibition titled /Collected Principles/, during which the works collected during EKKM’s first four years of operation will be exhibited for the first time, will try to demonstrate the manner of acquisition along with the works of art. By making the movement of symbolic conceptual capital between the institution and artist visible, the connections and relationships that are usually hidden from the public will also become visible. At the same time, the act of acquiring a work of art can also be interpreted as an artistic act — an institution’s “answer” to the artist; as a meta-artistic interpretation which now and hereafter will be an indivisible part of the work of art.

press release was compiled by
Anders Härm
EKKM Board

more info:
tel: +372 50 84 570
e-mail: anders@kunstihoone.ee

http://www.kunstimuuseum.ee/et/pressile/pressiteated/pressiteadete-arhiiv/971-kumu-residentkunstnike-programm-esitleb-visible-solutions