Exhibition Views 2011

October 26, 2011 - March 25, 2012, Kumu Art Museum, 4th floor, A-wing
In the 1970s and 80s, the Estonian cultural scene was a closed space, almost like a stage, with the lights directing people’s attention. In those years, the theatre had to fulfil various tasks related to politics, the study of history, and so on, all rather distant from drama and literature. The game of allusion was a lot of fun, but dangerous, too.

Curator of the exhibition: Anne Untera

October 7, 2011 - January 8, 2012, Kumu Art Museum, Grand Exhibition Hall
Adam Budak wishes to map the status of photography in the context of contemporary art.The curator is interested in how photography ‘works’ and under what conditions, and how it is possible to exceed the boundaries of this artistic medium or, in other words, to go TO THE OTHER SIDE.
Artists: Helena Almeida, John Baldessari, Becky Beasely, Stefan Burger, Miriam Böhm, Banu Cennetoglu, Sunah Choi, Haris Epaminonda, Geoffrey Farmer, John Gerrard, Jack Goldstein, Caroline Heider, Anette Kelm, Elad Lassry, Tatiana Lecomte, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Marlo Pascual, Alexandre Singh.

Curator of the exhibition: Adam Budak

September 12 - December 18, 2011, Kumu Art Museum, 4th floor, B-wing
The exhibition focuses on the years 1960–1975, when Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990) collaborated with the experimental Cricot 2 Theatre (formed in 1955, Kantor being a co-founder) and directed the plays The Country House (1961), The Madman and the Nun (1963), The Water Hen (1967) and Lovelies and Dowdies (1973), based on the avantgardist plays by the dramaturg and artist Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. The selection of works is topped off with stage props from the world-famous performance The Dead Class (1975). The latter was based on the texts by Witkiewicz, Witold Gobrowicz and Bruno Schultz.

Curator of the exhibition: Józef Chrobak (Cricoteka Center)

June 17 - October 30, 2011, Kumu Art Museum, 3rd floor, B-wing
James Ensor (1860–1949) is a world-famous painter, who enjoyed the reputation of being a leading modernist artist, despite the fact that his visionary and contradictory art was unusual and that he had more enemies than friends in art circles. Many artists, Jules de Bruycker (1870–1945) among them, were notably influenced by his work. While Ensor was a critic of human nature, de Bruycker mainly interpreted the milieu of Ghent in his works of art.

Curator of the exhibition: Tiina Abel

June 10 - September 18, 2011, Kumu Art Museum, Grand Exhibition Hall
The exhibition focuses on the work of Pavel Filonov, one of the most exceptional and unique masters of the Russian avant-garde in the first half of the 20th century, in a wider context. Filonov can be compared to the key figures of the Russian avant-garde, Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich; his uniqueness, however, is visible in the synthesis of the legacy of the Academy and a new art language.
The display has been compiled in cooperation with the State Russian Museum, whose collections hold the majority of Filonov’s legacy, and the best part of the Russian avant-garde art.

Exhibition coordinator: Elnara Taidre

May 13 – September 25, 2011, Kumu Art Museum, Contemporary Art Gallery
Twenty-seven artists from 16 European countries are participating in the exhibition and, of the 29 works on display, 14 are new projects that were specially commissioned for this exhibition.
The artists implement new technologies in non-traditional ways, in order to make mundane things more visible and easier to experience. For instance, Timo Toots’s Memoпoл II is a machine that maps the visitor’s virtual information field; in Real Snail Mail, a work by the English artists’ group boredomresearch, e-mails are delivered by brown garden snails; German artist Christina Kubisch’s Electrical Walks in Tallinn reveals the world of electromagnetic sounds surrounding us.

Curator of the exhibition: Sabine Himmelsbach

April 18 - October 23, 2011, Kumu Art Museum, 4th floor, A-wing
Urmas Ploomipuu (1942–1990) worked primarily as a printmaker, while also being one of the chicest representatives of the pop wave of the 1970s. Ploomipuu’s solo exhibition includes his prints and his few painted works – including four oil paintings, and a few gouaches and watercolours – which have not received much attention to date. However, in Estonian painting in the 1980s, his oil paintings rose to the fore because of their well-considered construction, technical craftsmanship and realistic portrayal, defining significant differences with his contemporaries.

Curator of the exhibition: Tõnis Saadoja

April 29 - August 28, 2011, Kumu Art Museum, 4th floor, B-wing
The exhibition creates a dialogue between two Estonian artists from the second half of the 20th century who painted cityscapes, two artists whose work from the 1970s and 1980s addresses the various means of perceiving the urban environment. Although Ludmilla Siim (1938) and Jüri Palm (1937–2002) belong to the same generation of artists, which was influenced by Pop Art and Hyperrealism, one can say that each of them had a personal and original relationship with urban surroundings – both were alone in the city.

Curator of the exhibition: Liisa Kaljula

February 4 - June 5, 2011, Kumu Art Museum, 3rd floor, B-wing
The creative endeavours of a conventional painter are focused on light and colour. Before artists started to use (artificial) light as a component of their artwork, they had for centuries depicted light in their paintings. They discovered that illuminated nature, full of reflected light, abounds in visual brilliance and moods. Impressionists, whose views were shared by the Estonian artists Adamson-Eric, Aleksander Vardi, Villem Ormisson, Konstantin Süvalo and Paul Burman, were capable of admirable dedication in studying space drenched in sunlight, of seeing the shimmer of air and shades of colour in it. For others, light became an important aid in setting a scene. Light helps to bring to the fore the most significant aspects, and forms the hierarchy of objects. Dramatic light can, but does not have to – it all depends on the style of painting – lead to a world of meanings behind visible reality. In particular, the poetic realists Kaarel Liimand, Andrus Johani and others of the Pallas school seemed to have the skill of telling a story with the help of light. We can find masters who dissolved light into its constituent parts and dealt solely with colour. Karl Pärsimägi’s joy of colour has become legendary in the Estonian art of the inter-war period; Endel Kõks and Lepo Mikko, who graduated from the Pallas Art School at the end of the 1930s, used pure colour surfaces in their work.

Curator of the exhibition: Tiina Abel

15th Tallinn Print Triennial
January 2 - April 17, 2011, Kumu Art Museum, 4th floor, B-wing
„Mapping“, is an exhibition that introduces outstanding art works from the Ljubljana Biennials of Graphic Arts, belonging to the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana. The Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts was one of the few international events that crossed the borders of the Cold War and didn`t care about whether the artists were rich or poor, came from one or another side of the Iron Curtain, from a colonized or an independent country.

Curator of the exhibition: Lilijana Stepancic

For Love not Money
January 21 - May 8, 2011, Kumu Art Museum, Grand Exhibition Hall
For Love Not Money looks at contemporary printmaking in the wider context of modern art trends. In English, the aphorism ‘for love not money’ is used to describe any activities which are done out of passion or love and which cannot be evaluated in monetary terms.
The participants in the exhibition are 46 artists chosen by the curators, and another 63 artists who have survived a fierce competition. The artists displayed at the triennial come from 35 different countries, and include renowned international artists of the highest level. Traditionally, the focus of the triennial is on the art of the Baltic countries, preserving its original identity through the participation of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian art circles.

Curators of the triennial: Simon Rees (Lithuania), Eve Kask, Eha Komissarov

For Love not Money
January 21 - May 8, 2011, Kumu Art Museum, Contemporary art gallery
For Love Not Money looks at contemporary printmaking in the wider context of modern art trends. In English, the aphorism ‘for love not money’ is used to describe any activities which are done out of passion or love and which cannot be evaluated in monetary terms.
The participants in the exhibition are 46 artists chosen by the curators, and another 63 artists who have survived a fierce competition. The artists displayed at the triennial come from 35 different countries, and include renowned international artists of the highest level. Traditionally, the focus of the triennial is on the art of the Baltic countries, preserving its original identity through the participation of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian art circles.

Curators of the triennial: Simon Rees (Lithuania), Eve Kask, Eha Komissarov