Fillip

Weekly Selections

Doings or Not at Hobusepea Gallery

Tallinn, Estonia / Initiated by two young art historians/practitioners, Margit Säde and Laura Kuusk, Doings or Not paves the way for a whole new generation of Estonian art, much of it using pranks and questions as bricks and mortar.

One of the three “Baltic Tigers” that broke out from the Soviet Union in early 1990s, Estonia was recently shaken by riots over the removal of a Soviet war monument. Some of the works on view deal directly with that event, like the work of artist Martin Paasuke. He distributed posters throughout the city of Tallinn inviting people to draw their own visions of freedom — the project coincided with the official competition for the monument for freedom and was generously answered by the irritated public. Many others (of the participating 13) also do little more than clearing space for something else to happen, like Triin Tamm who wrote “The Death of Effort” on a loaf of material that is meant for fixing things to walls. “I would not want to present a brand of ‘Young Estonian Art’,” says one of the curators; and it is not most likely not just because someone else has made the twist before, calling a young Estonian artists’ survey Young British Art (curated by Hanno Soans and Anders Harm for Tallinn Art Hall in 2001). The show carefully handles the art world’s and society’s pressure to perform, and “to fill in the import-export boxes,” as the curators call it. Just like with the Estonian YBA, the stress lies on the expectations of the audience, but here the displacement is swapped for a somewhat pushy intimacy as the curators ask: “How exactly is the audience programmed?”

Doings or Not runs 21 Jan 21 – Feb 2, 2009 at the Hobusepea Gallery in Tallinn, Estonia.