Kristi Kongi
Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real?
14.05.2021–19.06.2021
Kogo gallery
Tartu, Estonia
Exhibition photos by Marje Eelma
Graphic design by Aleksandra Samulenkova
The exhibition in 3D by Artland
Painter and installation artist Kristi Kongi’s solo exhibition “Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real?” at Kogo contemporary art gallery at the Tartu Widget Factory. The exhibition is open from 14 May to 19 June 2021.
The exhibition speaks of unfolding, awareness of place and recollection where colours have a central role. Kristi Kongi writes, “When I think of colours and where they come from, they are usually connected with specific places. I have usually experienced these places on my way to or from somewhere. During the last few years, as I travel around, I have written down the names of colours. I have discovered that by describing these places in this way, according to colours, my recollection of the experience is more precise and truer.“
The exhibition “Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real?” includes oil paintings on canvas and a painting installation that extends into the gallery space. The oil paintings were completed between spring 2020 and spring 2021.
Kristi Kongi is represented by Kogo Gallery and has participated in two previous exhibitions at the gallery – in 2018 “Secret Whistle in the Forest” with Mari-Leen Kiipli and in 2020 the group exhibition “Time to Dream or Fear?”. This exhibition is Kristi Kongi’s first solo show at Kogo Gallery.
“Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real?” is the second exhibition in the gallery’s program this year – “Ecology–Economy” – which addresses various sensitive issues in ecology and the economy.
Kristi Kongi (born in 1985) is a painter and installation artist whose work focuses on colour, light, and space. Her bright coloured paintings often take the form of impressive installations created for specific settings. Besides painting on canvas, plywood, walls, floors and ceiling, she also uses various cloured materials like fabrics, plexiglass to create her painting installations.
Specific places that the artist has visited or inhabited and her observations, emotions and memories are often the base of her paintings and installations. She likes to create space-in-space situations by transferring those memory-places to the exhibition space by self-invented transformations-systems. The latter arises from the painting experiments where Kristi tests different questions related to colour, light and shadow. Kristi has named those experiments “Exercises With the Moon” – an example of a poetic name, a kind of her paintings and installations often bear.
Kristi Kongi studied painting at Tartu Art College (BA, 2004-2008) and graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts painting department (MA, 2008-2011). She has been awarded Young Artist Prize (2011), Sadolin Art Prize (2013), Konrad Mägi Prize (2017) and nominated for the Köler Prize (2016). She is an associate professor at the Estonian Academy of Arts painting department.’
The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment, the City of Tartu and Akzo Nobel
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi. Nature is a dream. The light also changed colour with each moment. 2021. 45 × 40 cm
On the left:
Kristi Kongi. Shimmering star Magenta, 2021. 95 × 100 cm
On the right:
Kristi Kongi. Nature is a dream. The light also changed colour with each moment, 2021. 45 × 40 cm
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
On the left:
Kristi Kongi. The edges were hazier in the
twilight. The borders disappeared, but I found myself, 2020/21. 45 × 40 cm
On the right:
Kristi Kongi. Only Magenta is between us, 2021. 45 × 40 cm
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
On the left:
Kristi Kongi. Journey to the end of the colours,2021. 40 × 40 cm
On the right:
Kristi Kongi. I saw people lying in the forest. They (we) need this forest air, 2021. 40 × 40 cm
On the left:
Kristi Kongi. Journey to the end of the colours,2021. 40 × 40 cm
On the right:
Kristi Kongi. Only those who have not experienced unforgettable evenings are ri-diculous until the end, (Enrique Vila-Matas), 2021. 100 × 95 cm
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
From the left:
Kristi Kongi. Soaring in the heights. Colour is the fiction of light, 2021. 45 × 45 cm
Kristi Kongi. The garden of colours is infinitely deep and distant, 2021. 70 × 95 cm
Kristi Kongi. Everything you touch changes into the most beautiful colour, clearly Magenta was here. And waited for me. For me!
2021. 100 × 95 cm
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
From the left:
Kristi Kongi. Self-portrait. Flower of hope. With pink tinge, 2021. 40 × 40 cm
Kristi Kongi. Light comes from darkness, 2021. 40 × 40 cm
Kristi Kongi. Every colour has its meaning and strength. Colours are like people. They acquire meaning through their existence. (Two sad beauties), 2021. 100 × 95 cm
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi solo exhibition Shimmering star Magenta. Was it a dream or was it real, Kogo gallery, 2021. Photo by Marje Eelma
Kristi Kongi. Strange shapes glimmered in the forest. And Magenta. She swooped beautifully under the trees. And shone like diamonds, 2020/21. 40 × 40 cm
