On September 6, 2023 the co-exhibition of Kelli Gedvil & Kristen Rästas Wake Me Up When It’s All Over opened in Draakon Gallery. The exhibition will be open until September 30, 2023.
Wake Me Up When It’s All Over, the co-exhibition of Kelli Gedvili and Kristen Rästas, poetically reflects on the introverted urge to find shelter from everyday sensitivities and encapsulate in the digital world. The artists are focused on creating an atmosphere in which they explore the contemporary condition of humans living through one crisis after another.
The artists portray fantasy-based, long-lost and non-existent forms of life and landscapes in which to get lost in. They create symbols inspired by longing and grief, through which new artificial forms of life are born that can change the habitual ways of looking at the past and the way we form memories.
The exhibition includes an array of media – installative sculptures, intimate miniature works, interactive user experience based digital works and virtual reality, all accompanied by atmospheric soundscapes.
Kelli Gedvil (1994) has graduated the Estonian Academy of Arts with a bachelor’s degree in painting and a master’s degree in contemporary art, carried out exchange studies at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and the Valand Academy in Sweden. She has participated in several exhibitions in Estonia, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Hungary and Poland. Gedvil is the co-founder of the art group Robin Ellis Meta and the curator and web developer of the online gallery post-gallery.online. In her latest exhibitions “4EVER” and “Purifying Your Skin”, she has explored the behavioral patterns surrounding self-presentation in various virtual communities, how such patterns are expressed and how they affect the physical body.
Kristen Rästas (1992) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes video, conceptualism, virtual reality and mixed media sculptures. His latest projects are inspired by classical landscape paintings, which the artist subjects to digital technologies, creating environments of artificial nature that visualise the feeling of alienation and its connection to escapism. Rästas graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2019 with a master’s degree in contemporary art. He has also studied at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest and KASK University of Arts in Ghent, Belgium. Rästas has participated in exhibitions since 2012 in Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Iceland and Belgium. He is one of the artists who works under the shared pseudonym Robin Ellis Meta and is a co-founder of the online gallery post-gallery.online. The artist lives and works in Berlin and Tallinn.
Sound design for Kristen Rästas’ work: Mataya Waldenberg.
Technical support: Ian Simon Märjama.
Graphic design: Nathan Tulve.
The artists’ gratitude to: Natalia Wójcik, Sten Saarits, Leegi Kiis, Marek Gedvil, Ago Märjama, Johannes Luik.
Remembering Anti Kidron.
Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media in the program NEUSTART KULTUR Module D – Digital Mediation Formats.
Exhibitions in Draakon gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and AS Liviko.
Draakon
Exhibition by Kelli Gedvil & Kristen Rästas
Title: Wake Me Up When It’s All Over
Open: 06.09.-30.10.2023
Draakon Gallery, Pikk 18, Tallinn.
Mon-Fri 11.00-18.00, Sat 11.00-17.00
Photos by Roman-Sten Tõnissoo
