On Friday, 11 October at 5 p.m., Art Allmägi and Katrin Piile will open their collective exhibition “Symbiosis” in the large gallery of the Tartu Art House.
The opening exhibition is the third and final exhibition of the artists’ collaboration, in which the sacred trinity of the art world – author, idea and work – is elevated to an object of study.
The aim of the series of joint exhibitions has been to create a creative process based on the principle of correlation, with observable interaction. When partially handed over, the opportunity to fully control one’s own creative process dislocates the individual relationship between author and work. This mutual creative reflection provides a chance to explore the intrinsic facets of the media of painting and sculpture, which are added or lost as they move from the planar to the spatial (or vice versa).
In the first exhibition of the collaboration, Piile’s paintings were influenced/reflected by Allmägi’s work. The aim of the second collaborative exhibition was to create a dual-media exhibition, where the visual language and ideational background would form a cohesive environment that blurred the boundaries of authorship. In order to close the circle, the works created by Allmägi in the final exhibition of the series are influenced by the works of Piile.
The core of Piile’s works on exhibition in the Tartu Art House originate from the last joint collaboration project, “Origami”, and further developments of the works shown there. Allmägi’s works, in turn, are directly inspired by Piile’s work. Allmägi’s works incorporate, in addition to formal references, methods that Piile has used in her earlier work. The questions are: what is lost, what is retained and what is added?
Art Allmägi (b. 1983) is a sculptor and installation artist. He graduated from the Pallas University of Applied Sciences (BA) in sculpture in 2008 and from the Estonian Academy of Arts (MA) in sculpture in 2011. He has been participating in exhibitions since 2005 and started solo exhibitions in 2012. He has been awarded the Kristjan Raud Prize (2018), the Ado Vabbe Prize (2017) and the Köler Prize Audience Award (2016). He is one of the recipients of the Artist’s Salary 2023-2025.
Katrin Piile (b. 1987) is a painter and drawer. She graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2010 with a degree in painting. She has been exhibiting since 2006. She has been a member of the Estonian Painters Association since 2019 and the Estonian Artists’ Association since 2023.
The exhibition will be open until 10 November. The Tartu Art House (Vanemuise 26) is open Wed-Mon 12.00–18.00. All exhibitions are free of charge.
The exhibition activities in the Tartu Art House are supported by the Tartu city government and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Additional information: Maret Tamme, Producer of the Tartu Art House, produtsent@kunstimaja.ee, +372 5800 3882, www.kunstimaja.ee