The garden, which usually covers the tables in the restaurant, is this time also covering the walls. Art Prior is exhibiting a collection from many renowned contemporary Estonian painters. The garden has touched each one of them in its own way – the garden as a nature space and as a space that has offered something to think about over time. This time, it is Art Prior that is being coloured and diversified by the realistic or abstract, direct or indirect views of the garden and by the moments inspired by the garden.

The garden is just like a transition, a place between a living space with walls and a roof, and between the untamed wilderness or the city. The garden may represent something small, ordinary and private – a grassy backyard in the summer, where the sun lays gleams of light with its rays, someone’s hotbeds or a free elemental land behind the house, a view from the window into one’s self and the yard outside. But the garden can also be simply a corner next to a shed, in which there lays a satisfied kitten or a carefully trimmed representative park of some castle with an iridescent fountain between the rose bushes, while the sound of a violin plays in your mind.

The garden is a place as a fact, current or old reality; a place somewhere that is continuously being developed in our thoughts, memories and fantasies. If we know how to see it, the garden is like an arena with secret passageways with a hedge labyrinth as a coulisse, in which we can find ourselves in wonderland by following the rabbit with a pocket watch.

The participants of the exhibition “Inspired by the Garden” are Mauri Gross, August Künnapu, Kamille Saabre, Stina Murakas, Andro Kööp, Sven Saag, Maris Tuuling, Orest Kormashov, Mari Roosvalt, Toomas Vint, Andres Tolts.

Mauri Gross has values as the main topic of his oil paintings, these being objective, subjective, formal as well as substantive. By applying traditional and academic styles of painting, he has again and again depicted old and worn pairs of boots, as well as juicy and lively berry bunches, with a committed consistency based on the example of van Gogh. By examining such everyday objects and their meanings from every side, and even disassembling them into their initial components, the viewer is struck by their enchantment, just as by the magic wand of the advanced painting technique.

August Künnapu’s works have been characterized by pop art – optimistic colours and an emphatically naive choice of themes. He has become known by his openly jolly themes, and instead of using technical tricks in his paintings, he invests in sincere frankness. The characters partaking in an adventure in his works are not guys with a psychological inner world, but just signs put on the background of sharp colour contrasts. Through this, the artist is also addressing the meanings and stereotypes that societies, cultures, media and others have grafted onto the sign.

Kamille Saabre uses a hyper-realistic painting technique, although her aim is not to copy the beauty of nature, but instead to encourage the viewer to awaken their lust for cleanliness, innocence and maturity, which has been slumbering within them. Even though her paintings do not have human figures, they symbolize and elevate the circle of life of a human completely, in all of its phases. The artist’s favourite models, i.e. lush fruits and flowers, express her position that everything that is in our heart is a matter of all of us because we feed off of each other’s thoughts.

Stina Murakas has been affected by nature since childhood, which is reflected in her works – whether the characters are hardly predictable gentle petals, majestic and calm tree crowns or small birds and animals. The artist’s handwriting is, at the same time, characterized by deeply meditative as well as courageously spontaneous, free and flowing creative self-expression. Her works are sensitive, colourful and multi-layered; sometimes a little bit chaotic and secretive, but always aesthetic and harmonic worlds.

Andro Kööp has been known as a radical vanguard artist, designer as well as an interior designer, which, at the same time, adds social, playful and decorative aspects to his choice of themes. The works of the artist are always more or less spatial, to which he adds plant motifs and precious stones like spectres. The romantic and calm world created in such a way is supplemented by tones full of electricity and a semi-translucent raster background, which fits into a modern, as well as classical, interior and which has almost become a trade mark of the artist.

Sven Saag’s views from grandmother’s garden is an iconic motif, which the author has loved to follow and depict throughout the years, capturing the nuances changing over time, which never lose their nostalgic effect – whether it is a look back at childhood or a moment in the company of a hookah years later. These paintings are heard by the viewers as an echo of the steps in a lush garden far away, which has a hidden gate, through which the shadows behind the walker are stepping through as thoughts that do not let them be watched to the end, even through a modest peek behind a long fringe.

Maris Tuuling is mostly self-taught in the subject of art and this is probably why she has a playful attitude towards painting. Her works are usually painted in happy colours and often depict the life of the suburban wooden settlements. Her works do not have a harassing specificity; we do not recognize houses, streets and people. But Tuuling is a master of conveying moods by bringing us the careless and vernal nature of the outskirts as well as nostalgia and sparkle. Her works have the values known from the “Pallas” School – respect for colour and balance in form – as well as a healthy dose of irony.

Orest Kormashov’s paintings are characterized by strong colour treatment and the depiction of abandoned landscapes and situations. He has even been called an Estonian Matisse, due to his strong colours. He usually conveys the collars as large surfaces, putting together strong, sometimes contrasting and, at first glance, inappropriate tones. His works are not so much characterized by technical cleanliness or detailed nuanced richness, but by uncompromised intensity and certain tough poeticism.

Mari Roosvalt’s works reflect the nature of the artist – constant attempt to capture one’s feelings, surrounding world and its effect on the artist through signs and colours. The artist joins the world and painting as a single unit through colour plays, she has been strongly affected and inspired by many trips. The artist has put the strange lands and exotic nature to the canvas as a vision. Every new place and environment enlarges the field of view of the human soul and their understanding of the world, by increasing the measurements of the latter.

Toomas Vint’s enchanting works, which are recognizable in a good way, have every detail exactly composed, every blade of grass and corner of light has been thought through – analysis, which results in a metaphysically affecting painting, spiritual ideal landscape experience, where everything seems clean and forever unimpaired. The phenomenal exquisiteness of the artist has fed the ardour of the art researchers and the audience, his so called not-from-this-world-landscape rises above the usual landscape.

Andres Tolts and the history of modern art in Estonia have been inseparable for decades. His meaning to the local art world is no longer simply a creation of one artist anymore, and the “Tolts-likeness” has for years stood for a certain skill related to how to process the legacy of modern art individually. Tolts listens to conversations between geometry and popular colours, which is very characteristic to him and which has openly been mixed with exquisite sense of beauty.

Curator of the exhibition: Haus Gallery, Uus tn 17, Tallinn, 6 419 471, haus@haus.ee, www.haus.ee