OLE / SAADOJA IN RIGA

 

7.03-20.02.2008 Kaido Ole and Tõnis with an untitled exhibition OLE / SAADOJA in Riga Art Space.

 

PRESS RELEASE 7.03.2008

This exhibition is about comparison(s). What do you get, if you take one work by an Estonian photorealist painter and compare it with a work by another Estonian photorealist painter? Do you get a confusing conglomerate of post-conceptual artistic thought or do you get a clear balance between a (former) teacher and a (former) student? Do you need a spirit level to sort all this out or will common sense be enough? In the end, the question is: do you get two similar or different painters?
OLE / SAADOJA is an exhibition without a title. The viewer can see a pair of works that both date from 2003 and were executed in Tallinn. At that time Kaido Ole was working as a professor in the local art academy and Tõnis Saadoja was a student there. Among Estonian art critics there has been a lot of talk about ‘the school of Kaido Ole’ in recent years, although it only serves as an excuse for not being able to label one common trend – a strong belief in the photorealist technique among younger generation Estonian painters.
Finally, it is fair to say that both Kaido Ole and Tõnis Saadoja have developed distinct artistic agendas within the international matrix of conceptual photorealism. The exhibited works are actually those rare examples from their portfolios that actually share some formal similarities and can be easily compared. The dimension of time in these works, their narrative logic and zero-level brushwork say it all. Ole’s “Two” is a series of 5 paintings that juxtaposes sequential scenes of a woman and a man in the process of (un)dressing themselves, while Saadoja’s “The Melting of an Ice Cube” is a series of 20 paintings that depicts, as you can probably guess, the gradual melting of an ice cube. Are these guys really those ‘painters of modern life’ that Baudelaire once longed for?

The exhibition is supported by Center For Contemporary Arts, Estonia.