Until September 30, Joosep Kivimäe & Mathias Väärsi’s co-exhibition ‘The Posts of the Safety Net Bent from Flying into the Apple Tree Are Leftover’ is on view at Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn. The exhibition is curated by Laura Linsi.
When does a phenomenon become culture? According to the weekly newspaper Eesti Ekspress, the same amount of trampolines was sold in Estonia in 2021 as in Latvia and Lithuania combined. Could the lawn and trampoline flood be more than a random tendency? On the one hand, the phenomenon might appear alienating and self-absorbed – is it just a pose, has anyone even witnessed someone actually jumping on a trampoline? But on the other hand, the absurdity of the trampoline abundance directs one’s thoughts to more and less utopian futures – to jumping as shared experience; to abandoned trampolines as inorganic skeletons, the archaeological matter of our time.
Collective effort bounces high. In Inuit cultures, the end of the whaling season is celebrated with an event called Nalukataq. A group of people holds the canvas, traditionally made of walrus or seal skin, from its edges to allow one jumper to bounce up and down from the leather surface. The collective effort of individuals creates a temporary springboard with powerful properties. The high flight and the jumper’s aerial poses are collectively enjoyed. This is how a community celebrates.
Mathias Väärsi and Joosep Kivimäe create an image of a possible future, where shared habits and experiences, as well as the nostalgia surrounding them, are the basis for a subculture, the centre of which is also bouncing from the canvas. The steel frames of Estonia’s Best Trampolines press out from basements, and like archaeological material they carry stories from past times – of how the posts of the safety net got bent from flying into the apple tree, of how Kelly-Brigitta broke her leg between the springs. Young people who remember the heydays of consumerism and lawn mowing gather in parking lots to relive their shared experience. Do you remember how our eyes first met above the garden hedge? When dad was mowing the lawn and found our cans under the trampoline?
Joosep Kivimäe (b 1994) is a Tallinn-based photo artist. In his youth, he earned pocket money as a moss sweeper and lawn mower.
Mathias Väärsi (b 1988) is an Estonian artist, designer and ultra-cyclist, who was born on 23 December 1988 at 11:55 PM in the Tartu Maternity Hospital. He spent his childhood in Sagadi Manor and on Võsu Beach and attended the Vergi Kindergarten.
Laura Linsi (b 1989) is an architect, lecturer and editor-in-chief who is based in London and in Estonia. When she started university, her mother moved back to the centre of Tallinn from Pirita Kose, because, to Laura’s surprise, her mother had moved to the edge of the town mostly for the sake of her child.
Graphic design: Ran-Re Reimann
The exhibition is supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Hundipea
Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko AS.
Photography: Anna Mari Liivrand
