Alice Kask
Alice Kask will exhibit her paintings and drawings.
Alice Kask’s work comprises the quintessence of excellent art for the most demanding art connoisseur. Here a finely crafted academic skill of portrayal meets conceptual and philosophical thinking; the power of large-scale painting meets the personal nature of small drawings. The works are open to interpretation and reinterpretation, and presents a challenge to both the eye and intellect. No uniform and clear assessments can be made about Kask’s work. In it diversity, her work can be described using the vocabulary of psychoanalysis, social theories, style analysis, body practices and yet not total reveal or exhaust its possibilities.
The exhibition includes works completed during the last two years – both paintings and drawings – with which she is continuing her integrated creative practice. Alice Kask is still a minimalist, severe. Obscure, mysterious, nightmarish. The themes are ordinary to the point of being banal; simple figures in good physical shape, distinctive hands and strange omissions recur. The painting space is schematic; the finely modelled figure contrasts with the background, which does not provide any clues to their location. On Alice Kask’s paintings we see a world of titans, primeval supermen, and total detachment from our contemporary world – even when the subject is wearing a sweat suit and drinking mineral water from a plastic bottle. There is still something overwhelming, allencompassing, and magnificently powerful – even if the subject is only a white rag or small paper figure.
Alice Kask (b. 1976) graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with degrees in painting (BA 1999, MA 2002). She has participated in exhibitions since 1997, including the Prague Biennial (2007) and Painting in Process, an exhibition at the Kumu Art Museum that explored the developments in the art of painting (2010). Kask’s works are in the collections at the Art Museum of Estonia and Tartu Art Museum, the City of Tallinn’s art collection, and private collections. Kask received the Konrad Mägi Medal in 2003 and the Vaal Gallery Young Artist Prize in 2005.