Exhibitions

melanie bonajo’s exhibition is a research into the current status of intimacy in our increasingly alienating, commodity-driven world.

The exhibition focuses on the dialogue that emerged between the Italian Transavantgarde movement and the Estonian artists who founded the group Rühm T in the mid-1980s. At the core of this dialogue are opposition and the art of painting.

This exhibition represents one possible approach to the Estonian art of the second half of the 20th century, when it was characterised mainly by conflicts with and adaptations to the new political order established after World War II.

The exhibition brings together three different, yet equally sensitive artistic visions. Their photographic series exemplify how the camera may amplify the distance from the surrounding environment, lend voices to stones, plants and water, and make the intrinsic interlacing of natural and artificial environments visible.

The permanent exhibition, launched in 2021, tells the story of Estonian art as it evolved through Estonia’s multi-ethnic history, growing into a heritage that blends Estonian, Baltic German and Russian traditions.

The exhibition combines Jaan Toomik’s video installation Waterfall (2005) with Baltic German artists’ 19th-century Romantic landscape paintings.

The exhibition brings together the works of Elisàr von Kupffer (1872–1942), an artist with a Baltic-German background, and of the Estonian artist Jaanus Samma (1982).