Andreas Trossek
My ‘00s, TOP 10 or what arbitrary things can one find out about art if one divides the '00s with 1,5 million Estonian residents?
New Wave: Estonian artists of the 21st century (no. 4). Winter 2007 [Essays]. Tallinn, 2008

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There ’s actually not much to say about Merike Estna. She is probably one of the painters from recent years that had the easiest start for her career. In the first half of the new millennium, when it continued to be trendy to brag that the cultivation of the art of painting without reason or “for art’s sake” was obviously totally reactionary, firstly Estna’s caricature-like collages were be picked up by art professionals and she was also praised for her final project, which measured up as a market attraction and also partially constituted a kinetic painting. When it comes to her collages, then honestly, a person with a basic school education could also have managed to produce these lampooning cutouts of print advertisements, but the main thing was that Estna’s collages did not seem to be made just “for art’s sake” and one also met the same rainbows and bimbo faces in the artist’s paintings. Recently, in addition to canvases, Estna has dealt more thoroughly with film, in which characters with the same vacant looks and static condition as in her paintings are skipping around, the appeal of which would be hard for any painting gallery proprietor to underestimate. Actually, it turns out that Estna acts thoroughly like a portraitist in any format: her works always include the main character that is being portrayed and a background (mostly blue sky), but that’s where everything ends as a rule. Although there are plenty of recurrent motifs in her brightly colored pop-like image baggage, unexpectedly these do not exceed the diffused pseudo-narrative—Estna simply lacks a “classical” narrative will. What does repeat as a symptom in Estna’s world of images is the fact that in her universe it’s as if her subjects have suddenly been deprived of their ability to think and speak. She acts like a commissioned photographer, who, for the purposes of a framed family photo, asks the sullenly snivelling grandmother and squealing little girl
to be still. “Be good and look here,” the Brush Goddess commands. An ominous thundering is followed by a bright flash of light, which petrifies the portrayed faces into one and the same idiotic facial spasm for decades. The girl starts to cry. The little monkey escapes from the picture. Etc., etc.
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