IMAGINE
Glass and print exhibition
ARS Project Space, Pärnu mnt. 154, Tallinn
13.09. – 4.10. 2024 Mon-Fri 12-18
Opening Sept. 12. at 17.00
Artists: Sofi Aršas, Britta Benno, Sirje Eelma, Maria Erikson, Anu Juurak, Erki Kannus, Merle Kannus, Kati Kerstna, Kai Kiudsoo-Värv, Maarja Mäemets, Pilvi Ojamaa, Kairi Orgusaar, Rait Prääts, Kerttu Rannik, Lembe Ruben, Torsten Rötzch, Maret Sarapu, Tiina Sarapu, Liina Siib, Eili Soon, Andres Tali, Helen Tago, Kadri Toom, Mirjam Varik
The ARS Project Space will become a venue for an experiment in which masters of glass art and printmaking will join forces to search for common ground. We can observe ways in which an image takes shape in either medium, and ask ourselves whether a pipe can sometimes be just that – a pipe. Some of the more daring participants have crossed the divide between disciplines and ventured out into unknown territory.
The two fields appear to have a lot in common. Glass and print get along just as a label sticks to a bottle. Both are mediated by complex technological practices – physical and chemical forces become co-authors in the creative process. Fire and water, sand,
sunshine, light and shadow, melting and etching, happy accidents and Nature’s intervention can all overturn the artist’s initial plans. Do we have free will or are we led by the inevitable?
Glass is a chameleon, smoothly transitioning from being the star of the show to modestly framing a masterpiece to underlying an image as an invisible canvas. Glass objects and framed prints reflect the viewers’ own images back to them while they search for their own metaphors in the artwork.
Imagination, formless at first, eventually takes shape, becoming visible through the artist’s hand. At some point, imagination crystallizes into a fixed entity but its final form comes about through the reflection of the state of the world upon it. Where then is the artist and what is their image?
Curators: Merle Kannus, Lembe Ruben
Exhibition Design: Merle Kannus
Graphic Design: Lembe Ruben
Lighting: Kati Kerstna
Installation Work: Ian Simon Märjama, Erki Kannus
Initial Idea: Rait Prääts, Sirje Eelma
Thanks to: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Glass Artists’ Union, Association of Estonian Printmakers, Estonian Artists’ Association