MallNukke

Mall Nukke’s Idols are back in the Vaal gallery.
The present exhibition contains a selection of the three large series entitled Idols that have been created in the years 1992–1995. The first exhibition of the Idols also took place in Vaal in 1993. Today, however, both the location of the gallery and the context of the exhibition have changed.

Throughout times, Nukke has excelled as a virtuous collage artist. Her visual citations from the hyped-up media space of the 1990ies still enchant us with their courage and wit. To represent the social profile of that era, Nukke has used themes from Greek mythology. The curator of the exhibition Marika Agu describes it as follows: “It can be said that the artist is using her absurd scenes to compensate for the fantasies that have been lost through the process of fine-tuning the society. The collages talk about the mainstream life of the alpha males of these times when heroes and heroines who are emotionally incapable and are repulsive in their naive corporeality are settling their accounts. We are seeing characters who don’t inhabit the same space any more.”

The larger-than-life depictions in Nukke’s works contradicted the restraint of the Soviet era, the so-called genderless visual culture. Using cut outs from glossy journals and other readily available materials, the artist has managed to present the viewer with the extremes of the post-soviet reality. Since these works are made in the re-contextualising and re-editing mentality of the 1990ies, they still offer new impulses of interpretation. Nukke’s oeuvre of that time can be read together with the works of DeStudio, Marko Mäetamm, Laurentsius, Peeter Allik and Jasper Zoova of the same years. Triin Tasuja has started a dialogue with the artist’s retrospective and her poems articulate the kitsch and the gossip in Nukke’s collages.

The exhibition design is by Mari Uibo and the sound is by 0.9. The exhibition is curated by Marika Agu who has previously researched Estonian art of the 1990ies.

The Vulgar Shindig of the Idols
Retrospective exhibitions often smell of moth balls: why should we know about the memories of grandmothers, right? But Mall Nukke’s works feel very contemporary. The time has come full circle. The first exhibition of Idols also took place in Vaal gallery in 1993 and now they will start a fresh lap. The new version is curated by Marika Agu, designed by Mari Uibo and the poet Triin Tasuja has started a dialogue with the exhibition. They are all only a couple of years older than the works themselves: Idols speak even with people who only saw the nosy nineties as preschoolers. They will probably like that “the artist is using her absurd scenes to compensate for the fantasies that have been lost through the process of fine-tuning the society.” Maybe they see something that is missing in today’s art. Truthfully, not much has changed. The bandit-mentality of the nineties is ever-present in the buying of necessary laws, mining the forests of Estonia and building the Rail Baltic. Prostituting the naive illusion of welfare continues at the same pace even though the greed is not advertised as openly: the tiny devils have learned how to hide their tails.

Nukke talks with us in the language of myths. The works from all three Idols exhibitions (1993, 1994 and 1995) have titles and themes borrowed from antique mythology. This adds new layers and places the works that talk about the frivolity of the era in a universal context. Irony never disappears: Nukke’s grotesque crosses the pain threshold on every level of meaning. As a master of collage, the artist finds inspiration in dada and pop art of the sixties. Her repertoire of imagery is scant but very efficient. Mari Uibo has used one of Nukke’s leitmotifs – stripes – wittily in the design of the exhibition: the gallery is filled with hanging walls made from pink slats that create intimate spaces where to enjoy groups of works. Which is more frivolous: the works or the boudoir created for their discreet sampling? Life on the Parnassos is in sacral heights and to see Aphrodite Being Born out of Foam or Zeus’s Marriage the eyes must be raised up in reverence. However, on Vaal gallery’s balcony, the viewers are faced with the panoramic Dawn and Dusk at such a close distance that the full image is outside their visible range and they must scan the work as an unending saga of lunacy. The curator and the designer are doing a good job.

Mall Nukke is a member of the species of artists who are constantly becoming rarer: she knows how to paint and how to draw. And is masterful at it. I think that she might have the widest stylistic spectrum in Estonian art and can switch from expressionism to orthodox iconography or illusory photo realism – in her handwriting as well as her knowledge of the material – while still being recognisable as Mall Nukke. We don’t see it much at the present exhibition since she has stayed true to the clunky approach of collage as a genre, but her virtuosity is clearly giving her freedom. Young artists who are planning to reach for the stars should think about it. I am still glad that the curator didn’t try to offer us a vivisection of Mall’s career since Vaal gallery wouldn’t have been large enough. The current ensemble is thorough and convincing: sad in its irony and gloomy in its vulgarity.
Peeter Laurits