Exhibition "[‘mobil] Gallery 30"

Description

On 17 October Tartu Art Museum will open an exhibition that will reunite an artistic collective after a period of 30 years, featuring artworks from 30 years ago and brand new ones.

The [‘mɔbil] Gallery (1995–1998) was a collaborative project of art students and the lecturers Peeter Linnap and Eve Kiiler (then Linnap). The group got its start from the lectures on contemporary art and art theory given by Peeter Linnap, who had started work in the Estonian Academy of Art’s photography centre. Peeter hung a sign reading “Faculty of Taste” on the centre’s door, which saw lively debates and after-hours discussions. Thanks to these discussions and their participation in the Saaremaa Biennial 1995 The History Factory / Fabrique d’Histoire’s student exhibition The History Artel, the students, led by Marco Laimre, decided to continue working together under the name the [‘mɔbil] Gallery in October 1995. At that time they had no idea of the impact they would have on Estonian art history.

The [‘mɔbil] Gallery referred to exhibitions curated by the students themselves, which moved freely outside of the framework of official art institutions.

Most of the mobilists, second- or third-year students who had begun broadening their horizons in the lectures on contemporary art given by Peeter Linnap, enthusiastically placed photography- and installation-based conceptualism at the centre of their world view. The nineties were a whirlwind of post- and self-colonialism, and the young students were excited to be a part of them and turn them into art: they had to catch up to the artistic developments that they’d been deprived of. They were trying to become a part of the Western cultural sphere, where conceptualism based on photography and found objects had been a respected part of exhibitions for decades.

The young artists who had entered the art world through the History Factory wanted to show how history is constructed, to show the relativity of “objective” information, to present strategies of manipulation, and to teach people to doubt the memory and reality constructed by victors. So many interesting topics needed handling: the lack of an objective truth; the exposing of the mechanisms of manufacturing truth; simulations, fabrications and narratives; subjective confessions; the problems of sign–meaning relations; the determination of interpretational possibilities; the power to define and to set rules; manipulation, advertising, psychic terrorism etc.

This exhibition, dedicated to the [‘mɔbil] Gallery’s 30th anniversary, brings together the few works from that time still surviving and wholly new works from former members of [‘mɔbil] which continue their analysis of the process of writing history.

Participating artists: Eve Kiiler, Lennart Mänd, Mart Viljus, Piret Räni, Margot Kask, Arne Maasik, Marco Laimre, Piia Ruber, Mare Tralla, Peeter Linnap, Kadri Kangilaski and Toomas Tõnissoo, Rene Haljasmäe and Siram

Curator and graphic design: Piret Räni

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