Until 20 October, the exhibition ‘Residue: The House Is on Fire and I Am Waiting’ by Johannes Luik is on display at the Tütar Gallery (Tallinn, Estonia).
In his varied oeuvre, Johannes Luik has to date focused primarily on the space between exhibits, meaning that individual works are not perceived as isolated objects, but as elements of a larger ensemble. This time, however, he presents the works as objects that the audience can relate to one by one.
The works featured here are largely from earlier projects, with an emphasis on some of the lines of exploration developed from exhibition to exhibition. In one such line, Luik plays with immediate connections between material, content and form. Traditionally, they have been viewed in pairs – 1) material and form, and 2) content and form. While in the first pair, form means a structure, a principle, an idea that subordinates material, in the second it is more a physical shape or frame that submits to the content. Luik’s works, however, often include haunting and charming direct connections between the two.
Sometimes he makes the material itself the content of the work: something that is supposed to surrender to the form has begun to subdue it. For example, he places some materials at the centre of his work in their raw form. In doing so, he focuses on materials of little value such as OSB board, the texture of which he depicts in embroideries and pencil drawings. Not only is the form here being subjugated by the material, the material in question is of low value.
In other works, however, the form (in the sense of the frame that embellishes the work) takes over the content to such an extent that the latter is reduced to an almost non-existent slit. To achieve this, Luik prefers modern simple frames to more decorative ones. However, instead of the gilded or precious wood frames that have historically displayed the owner’s wealth, he once again makes them from cheap and raw materials, creating a disquieting tension between ornamentation and roughness.
One important change that allows Luik to make immediate connections between material, content and form is shifting the focus from the end result to the process of formation. In his works to date, he has stressed the importance of a raw or intermediate state of material to achieve this. Thus, OSB board or masking tape are primarily associated with a renovation mood, while bubble wrap is associated with moving objects from one place to another. Consequently, the emphasis has been on the pre-change event or precursor. It has the potential to resonate with analogous layers within ourselves that emerge when everything seems to be ahead and taking shape.
In this exhibition, Luik has also begun experimenting with the so-called aftermath. It is a material that has lost its function and form. Some of this material can be reused, while other types are already hopelessly unsuitable for human use. The latter can be found, for example, in burnt houses and other destroyed structures. The aftermath also has a human layer: it corresponds to a situation in which we feel like a human wreck— a shadow of a person on the verge of collapse, whose life and long-term plans have been destroyed, with no new ones on the horizon.
The keyword that manages to stitch together the precursor and the aftermath in this exhibition is the titular wait. Here, the hopeful wait for an imminent form and meaning is juxtaposed with a bleak, hopeless wait that can only derive meaning from the former form.
About the artist
Johannes Luik (1988) is an installation artist and sculptor living and working in Tallinn, Estonia. Luik graduated from Estonian Academy of Arts with a degree in Installation and Sculpture (BA 2019), LUCA School of Arts in Belgium with a degree in Fine Arts (MA 2021), and Estonian Academy of Arts with a degree in Contemporary Art (MA 2022). Luik has been awarded with Adamson-Eric Scholarship (2020) and Young Sculptor Award (2017 and 2018). In 2023, Johannes Luik, in collaboration with Laura De Jaeger, received the Annual Award of Cultural Endowment for Visual and Applied Arts for the exhibition “The Garden of Stretching Figures (and Other Forms of Metamorphosis)” by Jaan Luik.
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Accompanying text: Eik Hermann
Graphic design: Ott Metusala
Reproductions: Stanislav Stepaško
Exhibition views: Stanislav Stepaško & Kaarel Antonov
Photo: Kaarel Antonov
Photo: Kaarel Antonov
Photo: Kaarel Antonov
Photo: Kaarel Antonov
Photo: Kaarel Antonov
Photo: Kaarel Antonov
Photo: Kaarel Antonov
Photo: Stanislav Stepaško
Photo: Stanislav Stepaško
Photo: Stanislav Stepaško
Photo: Stanislav Stepaško
Photo: Stanislav Stepaško
Photo: Stanislav Stepaško
Photo: Stanislav Stepaško
Photo: Stanislav Stepaško
Photo: Stanislav Stepaško
