Tag Archives: VAULT

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PART-TIME

In the past, people used to place a nail inside a candle instead of setting an alarm clock.

We still try to measure time and divide it into parts. It would be good if we could manage to nail something – anything – down and preserve it for future generations. Yet in the end it seems that only the fasteners remain, time itself disappears.

Among other things, the passage of time reveals itself in the material world through separation: parts detach and move elsewhere. What do we truly need? What do we consume? What remains, and what becomes of it?

In everyday life, I erase the traces of my actions, sweep away fragments and coffee rings from the table. But where do the other leftovers go, all the accumulation of lost material and discarded objects produced by my own consumption? Does it take over and begin to live a life of its own, guiding my movement through time?

The heat generated by human activity accumulates and seeps out from masses of plastic and other waste, affecting both our environment and our actions. It seems there is a materiality to the past, a matter formed from memories, minutes, rubbish, lost objects, and the final stub of a candle. It unfolds both conceptually and physically beneath our feet. How can one find a winding path to oneself and to others, when only a few minutes and hours have been cast and pushed outward for us to find our way through an eternal, fragmented time.

Kati Erme is a jewellery artist who graduated from the Metal Art Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2001 and completed the teacher training programme there in 2003. In addition to jewellery, she has studied painting at the Konrad Mägi Studio in Tartu and has participated as a painter in several national and international exhibitions. Since 2007, she has exhibited her jewellery work at A-Galerii. The present exhibition grew out of ideas and artistic inquiries that emerged while creating works for A-Galerii’s recent annual exhibitions.

Exhibitions at A-Galerii are supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

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JEWEL AS COLOR

The aim of the exhibition JEWEL AS COLOUR is to introduce both the recent and decades-old work of Ivar Kaasik, his vision of jewellery, and its connections to traditions and the contemporary world. The exhibition presents an overview of Kaasik’s jewellery creations since 1990 and is dedicated to the artist’s 60th anniversary.

Kaasik’s life’s work is exceptionally extensive and becomes more comprehensible when each piece is viewed independently, without focusing too much on the absence of smooth transitions within the whole. Nevertheless, in this exhibition, the unifying theme of his sculptural works is colour. In Kaasik’s creations, colour appears both in a metaphysical sense and in material form as oil paint, acrylic paint, their pigments, and dust. In addition, he employs coloured synthetic and natural minerals, including gemstones and corals. Ivar Kaasik writes:

“My creations want to know what kind of a depiction or a thing they are. What makes something silent speak? How do they relate to language, which in society receives more attention than objects? To understand this, one must scrape away the fossilized foundations. Only modern jewellery gives an object a new role and the right to exist, which earlier traditional attitudes did not allow.
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The materialization of a gaze into jewellery through the artist’s hand is like a sovereign, incomprehensible act that cannot be fully explained, because between pure idea and matter lies not only the work of the eyes but also other bodily activity. This sometimes leads us to what we call art.”

Ivar Kaasik (b. 1965) is an Estonian jewellery and visual artist who has lived and worked in Berlin since 1992. He studied architecture and metal art at the Estonian Academy of Arts (1992) and spent an exchange year in Halle, Germany. Kaasik has gained international recognition in both painting and jewellery, participating in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Estonia, Germany, and across Europe. His work intertwines existential themes, historical references, and bold use of colour, often merging the boundaries between painting and jewellery. Kaasik’s works can be found in several collections, including the permanent collection of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, as well as the private collection of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. In 1996, he was awarded the DeBeers Diamonds International Award, often referred to as the “Oscar of jewellery art.”

Exhibition is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment