Jaan Toomik
Location: 2nd floor, Great Hall
Jaan Toomik (b. 1961) is the most internationally renowned and at the same time undoubtedly the most locally controversial contemporary artist in Estonia. He began his career in the late 1980s as an expressive painter. On his canvases from that period, the search for mystical states of mind intertwined with harsh physicality, and mandalas were fused with inverted Christian iconography.
In the early 1990s, collective actions involving primal elements were added to his paintings to intensify perception. As his works became more deliberate and impersonal, Toomik found himself in step with the international art scene. Discovering in installation art, a language that was both formally minimal and impersonal yet suggestive in content, Toomik became one of the first artists in Estonia to transition to installation video in 1994.
This is the format with which Toomik has participated in international biennials and major exhibitions (São Paulo Biennial, ARS 95, Venice Biennale, Site Santa Fe Biennial, Berlin Biennale), and through which he is represented in the collections of prestigious European museums (Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Kiasma in Helsinki, Ludwig Museum in Budapest, among others).
A key aspect of Toomik’s later work is the merging of his experience as an installation artist with an interest in documentary approaches.
Preacher in San Antonio (1997) resonates with the brave new world suddenly again demanding from everyman a firm answer to whose side one is standing on and whose blood one is ready to spill. In the new videos he uses medium-specific approach collecting fragments of the everyday saturated with meaning. Thus Toomik let’s the most banal question – what is the meaning of life – pop up in the most absurd situations (Telephone Story, 2005). He focuses on the everyday occurrencies, but hunts for moments characterised by out of place metaphysical pretensiousness, naked confessions or feelings heated up to the point of saturation (Maiu, 2007, Jaanika, 2007). A detail picked up by the camera eye with hilarious surprise effect mutates in the arbritary sugestivity of painted images, turns into the Real, into something threatening to identity. While painting, Toomik focuses on a psychologically charged image – often haunted with a remote autobiographical motive – on tuning it to maximal intensity (Jesus Christ Puked out in the Morning, 2007). But be it the paintings, the videos or the short feature film (Communion, 2007) – here we are being communicated about the birth, the death, begetting, collective participation and the sense of salvation, all revealed in trifling details. By Toomik, by his characters and by the reality around us the exhibition resonates with.
Curator: Hanno Soans
