Breadcrumb
Artist Taavi Suisalu in collaboration with physicist Siim Pikker
27.01.2020
Opening on 24th January at 4 pm.
The project “Artist and Researcher in Collections” is a further development of “Artists in Collections”, an exhibition series that took place in 2018 and was one of the highlights of the 100th anniversary celebrations of the Republic of Estonia. The University of Tartu Museum (UTM) wanted to invite an artist to research its collection with the aim of creating an exhibition in the university’s art museum, but with an important twist of adding to this dialogue also a scientist from the University of Tartu. The project managers of “Artists in Collections”, Maarin Ektermann and Mary-Ann Talvistu, selected the artist Taavi Suisalu who works with technology, sound and performance.
In autumn 2019, Suisalu visited many of the museum’s collections and found the starting point of the exhibition. On the one hand, this was based on the museum’s collection of 19th century measuring instruments, and, on the other hand, by the galleries of the University of Tartu Art Museum (UTAM) where the exhibition was to take place and where the walls are covered by Pompeii-style murals. After preliminary research, Suisalu decided to travel to Italy to collect additional data and material for the exhibition. He constructed a portable seismometer that he could use to listen and register the subterranean vibrations of the Vesuvius volcano.
Instead of the tragic story associated with the town of Pompeii, Suisalu was more interested in the processes that are currently carried out in the ruins using new technologies. In addition to scanning, the town is re-created in both digital and physical form in an attempt to display the former reality. A tiny granule of the soil of Pompeii travelled with Suisalu to the laboratory of the University of Tartu Institute of Physics where the physicist Siim Pikker became involved. Using an electronic microscope, a 3D-model was created of the granule and thus the microscopic particle gained a perceptible volume. This “unusual object that influences reality”, as the artist himself has called it, also makes us ask questions about the ruins of Pompeii: When does the reality become a model? At what point more has been restored than was originally present? How does this affect our experience?
By using his art to analyse the effect that a physical location that has been mediated by contemporary technology has on the sensibilities of people, Suisalu wants to create models or instruments that make the world visible and understandable for us. New technologies create new ways of acquiring data so that we constantly feel that we are getting closer. But to what?
The exhibition will remain open until the 27th of March.
Supporters: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tartu City Government, Cramo Estonia OÜ
Additional information:
Univercity of Tartu Art Museum
Univercity of Tartu Art Museum
Tel: +372 737 5385
E-mail: kunstimuuseum@ut.ee
Ülikooli 18, 50090 Tartu
Mon–Fri 11.00–17.00
Ülikooli 18, 50090 Tartu
Mon–Fri 11.00–17.00
