New Estonian Architecture Exhibition, Geometry and Metaphysics. Mare Vint and Arne Maasik

Geometry and Metaphysics. Mare Vint and Arne Maasik

Estonian Architecture Exhibition News in 2019, Tallinn, Estonia

27 May 2019

New Estonian Architecture Exhibition

Opening of the exhibition “Geometry and Metaphysics. Mare Vint and Arne Maasik”

Opening of the exhibition June 6th at 5 p.m. 2019

Museum of Estonian Architecture, Tallinn, Estonia

Printmaker Mare Vint and architect-photographer Arne Maasik, younger by one generation, are both well-known Estonian artists. However, the exhibition in the Museum of Estonian Architecture is for the first time they are presenting their works together, a specific dialogue is created where Maasik’s works are in direct response to those of Vint.

Mare Vint. Air and metal II. 1988. Litography:

image : Arne Maasik. Architectonics XIX. 2019. Digital photo

The photo series Architectonics specially taken for the exhibition are like Maasik’s tribute to Vint’s architecturally organised pictorial worlds, but also reflect his understanding of the ideal space and ideal architecture as an architect. These are meticulous compositions where nothing is redundant and nothing is missing, where architecture has reached the ultimate level of abstraction and generalisation.

Maasik, who had previously photographed scrubby thickets and houses, has this time constructed the photographed objects himself: the precise mock-ups with their clear and definite sense of line are three-dimensional models of something he calls “white architecture”: “I am interested in the emergence of a metaphysical origin in white architecture, white surfaces and the emptiness between them.

Openings in walls, light and shade. My goal is to create a geometric space”. Maasik’s models have a familial resemblance to the “architectons” which, according to a tradition dating back to the Russian avant-garde art of the 1920s, signify abstract sculptures created by architects that strived toward pure geometric art.

Mare Vint strives also for order and the perfect balance in the image space. Her motifs are always extremely aesthetic: nature, parks and houses appear in Vint’s work as perfected archetypes – as ideal forms.

We have all seen these landscapes, walls and white southern cities somewhere; we recognise them by their simplicity, and yet we remain outside because they are pronouncedly inaccessible, like images from a dream. Vint’s aesthetics have been associated with the reaction of the artists of her generation to the ugliness and the harrowing reality of the Soviet era.

They sought motifs from minimalist Japanese beauty through references and emptiness. However, in Vint’s toolkit of architectural motifs, we can also recognise a postmodern awareness that was brought to the Estonian art scene by young architects in the 1970s – historical buildings, classicist elements, the beauty of decay and ruins, and the relationship between nature and the urban environment.

Exhibition is accompanied by the richly illustrated catalogue (texts by Elnara Taidre, Triin Ojari, in Estonian and English).

The exhibition is open until August 25, 2019

Mare Vint (b. 1942) is a well-known Estonian printmaker, since 1968 exhibits regularly her drawings (India ink and coloured pencil), serigraphs and lithographs in Estonia as well as abroad.

Arne Maasik (b. 1971) is a photographer and artist with an education in architecture. His focus is on metropolises as well as their outskirts, old houses and the underbrush, as well as other peripheral living environment.

Authors: Mare Vint, Arne Maasik
Spatial design: Arne Maasik
Graphic design: Jaanus Samma
Texts: Triin Ojari
Supporter: Estonian Cultural Endowment

Eesti Arhitektuurimuuseum, Ahtri 2, Tallinn 10151

www.arhitektuurimuuseum.ee

New Estonian Architecture Exhibition image / information from Estonian Centre of Architecture

Location: Museum of Estonian Architecture · Ahtri 2, Tallinn, Eesti, Tallinn 10151, Estonia, eastern Europe

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