is an artist whose work can be described as a cross-media artist’s practice. The artist manipulates sound and image, thought and material with the purpose of transfer nonmaterial values into a physical form. Maripuu has obtained BA degree in the chair of painting, faculty of arts and humanities at the University of Tartu and MA degree in the department of painting, faculty of fine arts at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
With the current exhibition Ex Nihilo, the artist observes how technology adapts to everyday consciousness (or vice versa) while influencing the development of contemporary visual language. The exhibition challenges the principles that are expected and valid on today’s society and emphasizes important issues about the interrelations between technology and man, the developmental potentials, originality, anonymity and related existential essence. Maripuu brings attention to digitally generated images while decelerating their usual chaotic flow in the field of perception and analyzes their meaning and influence in the field of contemporary art. Present exhibition serves as a continuation to Maripuu’s earlier projects where the artist has studied the essence of post-internet in contemporary art, neo-materialism, various subcultural phenomena and manifestations of digital era that all have had impact on the development of visual language.
Ex nihilo (Latin phrase meaning „out of nothing”) manifests a creative act where „something” is born „out of nothing”. Frames have been caught from the chaotic, endless flood of information at high speed and chained into a static form. This presents a magic act about the abstract, unexpectedly glimmering information, about its registration, crystallization and materialization in a physical environment. The artist is hindering the modern way of processing information that is mediated to us at the speed of the fraction of a second – he is creating the buffer between the virtual and the material. The digitally generated virtual image meets the organic manual one, analyzing the forms and possibilities of manifestation of contemporary visual aesthetics.
Exhibition will be open until May 20, 2019.
Artist’s website: www.mihkelmaripuu.com [1]
Supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Lipuvabrik LLC and Pühaste Brewery.
Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Estonian Ministry of Culture.