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A New Photogenic Köler Prize

Liisa Kaljula (2/2016)

Liisa Kaljula visited this year’s Köler Prize show at the Contemporary Art Museum Estonia.

 

 

16. IV–5. VI 2016
Contemporary Art Museum Estonia


I do not know if there were any conditions set for the new executives of the Contemporary Art Museum Estonia (EKKM) when it comes to the content or form of their work. Nevertheless, I am happy that the Köler Prize, one of the most important annual contemporary art events of the last five years in the Estonian art scene, survived the change in leadership. Although there is a rumour going around that this Köler Prize, the sixth, is most likely to be the last annual one.

Under EKKM's black flag, the Köler Prize has always been a befitting mélange of punk and glamour, although maintaining a high standard in the installation of artworks is crucial, and even Anders Härm's curatorial position with his anti-institutional approach was definitely not focused on anti-aesthetics. There is also a sense of haste in this exhibition, although some artists have used the Köler Prize as a platform with great visibility to showcase their best work in the hope it could become a springboard for their career.

Paradoxically, the works that do not look that convincing in person, seem very good in the media! And that makes me think of one rather new tendency in the practice of contemporary art – orientation towards being photogenic. To some degree this tendency has been imported from larger European cities, where the rent for gallery spaces is high and exhibition periods are short. This often makes artists approach their solo shows as temporary set-ups that act as production sites for finely tuned photographs for their website and publications.1

On the other hand, many large art museums have discovered that large-scale artworks or those that create well-rounded total environments bring in a new audience – active social media users constantly searching for new impressive visuals for their Instagram and Facebook accounts.2 There have also been studies conducted on the negative side of this tendency – the audience's increased expectation of experiencing art, above all, in an emotional and sensationalized way, which detaches them from a deeper and more conceptual experience of art.3 This is something Marina Abramović manifested in her solo show "The Artist Is Present" (2010) at MoMA, New York: as life gets increasingly faster and more virtual, the more slowness and presence in art becomes important.

This year Art Allmägi is the most present of the nominees. He has created a complex and manifold reflection of his 2014 solo exhibition "Külm sõda" (Cold War) at Draakon Gallery, where he boldly played with the location of the gallery, just across the street from the Russian Embassy, and intentionally went over the top representing the fear of a surveillance society. I am quite sure by the time this review is published Allmägi will have won at least one of the Köler Prize awards – maybe the people's choice award, as Allmägi is internationally less known – but maybe even both of the prizes (Indeed, Allmägi received the people's choice award on the 27th of May, at the gala that took palce at EKKM. – Ed.). Out of all the nominees Allmägi is working with the most pressing and political themes – Crimea is still annexed and the cold war is still lurking in the shadows.

 

 


Art Allmägi

Art Allmägi
Cold War / Xолодная война
2014
installation, variable dimensions
Exhibition view at EKKM
Courtesy of the artist
Photo by Johannes Säre

 

 

 

Yet if we consider the artists' work as an entirety, the award is best deserved by Laura Põld (Indeed, the winner of Köler Prize 2016 was Laura Põld. – Ed.) – especially for her recent solo show "Sada ulma keset merd" (Hundreds of Illusions Charted as Land) at the Tartu Art Museum; however, her exhibition at the Köler Prize show is less present and concentrated due to her busy exhibition schedule. Although using the tilted space in the coal loading ramp in a queer feminist way (as proposed by curator Rebeka Põldsam in "Feeling Queezy?!" in 2014) – vertigo as the feeling of transferring from minority to mainstream, with the aim of creating a common ground based on solidarity – works wonderfully, and Põld's abject ceramic slugs suit this concept well.

Raul Keller's work was perhaps the biggest surprise in the Köler Prize show because everything we would expect of him – massive brutal industrial aesthetics – was somehow different this time. But hey, contemporary art is always a risk and if it were not, it would not be contemporary art. Keller's new work, which uses stairs and light to draw attention to the exhibition space's industrial character, does not provoke the kind of pause one would expect from a spatial installation. Although it is good to see the layers of culture specific to the space, especially for those who have been to EKKM's shows right from the beginning. Krista Mölder has also taken quite a lot of risks and focuses on particularly subtle aesthetics: photographs that are viewable through tracing paper and ghostly projected animals that suddenly appear and disappear.

Kristi Kongi's exhibition of her previous work "Ma ei ole oma pead padjal liigutanud" (I Haven't Moved My Head From The Pillow, 2012) is unbelievably good, as it showcases a contemplative intellectual approach to painting that has always been so convincing in her work. Kongi's new work "Visuaalne essee akendest vaatlemisest" (A Visual Essay on the Contemplation of Windows, 2016) represents the pop-like and eclectic direction that already seems a little forced, although it links to the ideas and requirements of the postinternet era.

In a recent article in the cultural weekly Sirp, Airi Triisberg wrote that the new generation in charge of cultural institutions has abandoned critical agendas and willingly create the glamorous image the market demands.4 It is no secret that many curators and critics of the younger generation both in Estonia and elsewhere are using the internet to cultivate their brand and as such are no different in their use of neoliberal tactics. And one should probably accept the fact that EKKM, founded under a black anarchist flag by Anders Härm, Marco Laimre, Elin Kard and Neeme Külm, may no longer produce a non-complacent anti-capitalist programme. However, the aim of the generation change is to re-establish a connection to a changed mentality and keep EKKM as a place to come together, a place that changes and as such keeps up with the changing times.

 

Liisa Kaljula is an art historian and critic working with the painting collection of the Estonian Art Museum.

 

 

1 From the author’s conversation with Laura Põld and Johna Hansen in their temporary studio in the ARS building (Pärnu mnt 154, Tallinn), 1. IV 2016 (author’s personal notes).

2 Katharine Schwab, Art for Instagram's Sake. – The Atlantic 17. II 2016.

3 "This is not a plea for silent or empty galleries but for more thoughtful ones," says Sarah Crompton, the art editor of the Daily Telegraph who argues in favour of prohibiting photographing in art museums. See: Sarah Crompton, Why You Shouldn't Take Photos in Galleries. – The Daily Telegraph 13. VIII 2013.

4 Airi Triisberg, Uus põlvkond, vanad probleemid. – Sirp 29. IV 2016.

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