one-on-one. on skills

Curators of the exhibition Laura Põld and Kati Saarits: “The group exhibition “one-on-one. on skills” evolved out of our own practices and methodological preferences as artists, and features a selection of tradition-rooted applied art and the increasingly material-centred contemporary art practices. The artists invited to display their works on the two storeys of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia are from different generations, separated by their cultural backgrounds and the manner in which they identify themselves in the art world, but what they have in common is the fact that they all use time-consuming techniques, with an emphasis on form and material. A dialogue was created by placing together contemporary pieces by artists working in different material traditions and creators who have made a distinctive career out of relying on craftsmanship. The core of the exhibition was made up of four renowned Estonian applied art figures – Leo Rohlin, Leesi Erm, Helle Videvik and Mall Tomberg – whose works were explored by process- and skill-based Estonian and international artists. Anna Mari Liivrand and Eva Mustonen took sculptures that playfully dissected the qualities of materials and juxtaposed them into sophisticated combinations. The works of Mona Aghababaee and Katja Beckman added clear fundamental elements of craft into the exhibition context. Nadia Hebson’s spatial installation received direct impetus from Helle Videvik’s ceramic series Moments. The spatial design dialogue of Leo Rohlin’s forms, Field, which came about in a collaboration between Kaisa Sööt and Koit Randmäe, softened and dismantled the structure of a classic pedestal. Thus, it seems to us, as curators who are ourselves artists, that it is important to bring out the part of the work of artists working in manual media that is articulated as tacit knowledge – natural or intuitive knowledge. How does one convey knowledge about skill? What is skill made of?”

Photos by Alan Proosa