Erki Kasemets ja Camille Laurelli. Bricollage
Curator: Siim Preiman
On Friday, 1 September at 6 pm, Erki Kasemets and Camille Laurelli will open their duo exhibition Bricollage at Tallinn City Gallery, where material becomes art and art becomes material, and where the artists give each other futile tasks and misleading instructions. The exhibition is curated by Siim Preiman.
Erki Kasemets and Camille Laurelli are artists whose lives and works are equally deeply intertwined. Their work is not determined by specific methods or finely honed techniques, but rather by a generally open and hybrid attitude towards art and their role in it. Both are fascinated by games; both are avid collectors and equally enjoy invention and mishap.
A three-way ping-pong of ideas has led to a labyrinth-like exhibition based on reuse and playfulness. The display features light, kinetics, interactivity, readymades and textiles. Rather than finger-wagging and moralising, it deals with figurative issues, yet it is still performative and active in its own way, rather than static or passive.
“Inviting Erki Kasemets and Camille Laurelli to make an exhibition together is one of those ideas that, in retrospect, seem so natural that you can’t even put your finger on the moment when it happened. Neither of them could be considered exactly a cultural blocker, however, there is definitely a certain amount of resistance or refusal in their actions. How is it possible that these two artists didn’t meet sooner?” Siim Preiman, curator of the exhibition reflects on the exhibition.
Bricollage will remain open until 5 November 2023.
Tallinn City Gallery (Harju 13, Tallinn) is open from Wednesday to Sunday 11–6 pm. From 1 April, half-hour tours in Estonian will be held every Saturday at 1 pm. Free entry.
Erki Kasemets (1969) is an installation, painting, performance and theatre artist whose work covers various fields of activity: trash art, polygon theatre, systematic documentation of his personal life, material culture, kinetic art, environmental and stage designs, etc. His most recent performances include participation in the group exhibition Untamed at the Tartu Art Museum (2021), the solo exhibition Karl Marx in the Animal Kingdom at the Draakoni Gallery (2020) and the solo exhibition at the Audru Museum (2019).
Camille Laurelli (1981) is an intermedia artist whose confusing, failing and evasive creations span video, photography, performance, sculpture and curation. Laurelli is a dedicated collaborator, initiator and collector who, among other things, runs the video game museum LVLup! in Tallinn since 2018. His recent appearances include participation in the group exhibition Crawl Out Through the Fallout at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (2022), the solo exhibition Kaudze at Low Gallery in Riga (2021) and the solo exhibition News Feed at ARS Showroom (2019).
