LOG IN

REGISTER

* Indicates a required field
*
*
*
*
*
Requesting additional rights. To obtain additional rights in the Digital Collection, please fill in the Project Information field above.
Submit

FORGOT YOUR PASSWORD?

* Indicates a required field
*
Submit
Collection highlights
The “House of Playboy" looks like a photo-montage or a computer simulation, however it is actually a documentation of an object made by Raul Rajangu, the size of a doll-house, situated in the artist's hometown Viljandi. In this unreal yet playful environment Rajangu combines symbols from the recent past (the pentagon of eternal fire), significant objects from art history (the urinal of Duchamp), and personal fixed images that are continuously repeated in his work (for example an oven). We can see in this work a postmodern combination of ruins of previous ideologies, “upon which only a House of Playboy can be built, a house that is open to everyone who is paying, where nothing is sacred."* The work however also involves a clever game with the viewer, a labyrinth with several exits, or no exits at all, in which “one detail leads to another, every image creates a feeling that it should have been preceded by another particular image", objects that set up perceptual traps and “create abundant associations of thought and archetypal symbols", throwing “pepper of simulation and salt of ambivalence into the viewers' eyes."** This installation was displayed for the first time in Vaal Gallery in 1996. Anu Allas * Heie Treier, Social Visit to the House of Playboy. - Vikerkaar, 1996, 5-6, p. 63. ** Kiwa, News from the Plateau of Rajangu. - Kunst.ee, 2001, 4, p. 24.

Raul Rajangu
House of Playboy

 
Artist: Raul Rajangu (1968 - )
Title: House of Playboy
Date: 1996
Technique:
Material:
photo
paper
Height (cm): 118.5
Width (cm): 118.5
Description: The “House of Playboy" looks like a photo-montage or a computer simulation, however it is actually a documentation of an object made by Raul Rajangu, the size of a doll-house, situated in the artist's hometown Viljandi. In this unreal yet playful environment Rajangu combines symbols from the recent past (the pentagon of eternal fire), significant objects from art history (the urinal of Duchamp), and personal fixed images that are continuously repeated in his work (for example an oven).
We can see in this work a postmodern combination of ruins of previous ideologies, “upon which only a House of Playboy can be built, a house that is open to everyone who is paying, where nothing is sacred."* The work however also involves a clever game with the viewer, a labyrinth with several exits, or no exits at all, in which “one detail leads to another, every image creates a feeling that it should have been preceded by another particular image", objects that set up perceptual traps and “create abundant associations of thought and archetypal symbols", throwing “pepper of simulation and salt of ambivalence into the viewers' eyes."** This installation was displayed for the first time in Vaal Gallery in 1996.

Anu Allas

* Heie Treier, Social Visit to the House of Playboy. - Vikerkaar, 1996, 5-6, p. 63.
** Kiwa, News from the Plateau of Rajangu. - Kunst.ee, 2001, 4, p. 24.

Related categories: Contemporary Art
Copyright notice: Art Museum of Estonia
AME collection: Contemporary Art Collection
Collection number: FV 1
Accretion number: EKM j 45269
File info: Source type: digital photography
File type: JPG
File size: 2.28MB
Resolution: 3514*3548px @ 600dpi
 
Search Press Photos Exhibition Views Reproduction Fees Online Shop Photo Collection