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Show RCA 2019

Merle Luhaäär

Show RCA work

Major project:

I Will Always Love You

I Will Always Love You looks beyond the romance within personal relationships to consider contemporary society and its suicidal tendencies born from a self-destructive 'prosecco-on-tap' mentality plagued by substance abuse and irrational lifestyles wherein drugs, alcohol and overworking becomes a dangerous game.

'I Will Always Love You' with a flower-holding skeleton depicts an ironic view of the world where more is never enough and there are shortcuts via chemical stimulants towards providing unlimited energy to remain in a continuous present tense called 'always'. The consequence of this unlimited borrowing of time and energy from ourselves often leads to an overdose, in private as well as in professional spheres, an over-saturation of the core values that make us human.

The red neon 'I Will Alway$ £ov€ ¥ou', with letters swapped for currency symbols, is a clue that the 'you' can refer to a lover, an admirer, or 'a partner in crime', as well as to a narcissistic love and a pursuit of wealth, fame and success.

Literary classics lying around the semi-historical living room installation remind the viewer that an endless chasing of love, greed and debauchery is not a new phenomenon, it has always been a part of every society and only the appearances have changed. The feeling of deceitful reality is reinforced by the installation being presented as a quasi nature morte, where the painting on the wall seems more alive than the characters being portrayed as skeletons. Ultimately, it suggests that 'always' is just a chimaera and the overachievers in our society are merely chasing their own tails 'until the day they die'.

Info

  • I am a mixed-media artist and designer working within the mediums of print, painting, digital art, moving image, sculpture and installation. While applying my art to interior design, textile design and graphic design, the ideas behind my creations stand mostly in line with metaphysics and semiotics of culture. My grotesque and oversaturated style has been inspired by Pop Art from the 60s and 70s, and has developed as a reaction to contemporary minimalism. Using dark humour and satire as the tools of artistic language, my ‘kitschy' mythological and pop-cultural imagology has a notion of the surrealist superimposition of seemingly unrelated images. Rather than in a white cube, I prefer to exhibit my 'carnivalesque' artworks in the mundane context of a public sphere.

  • Previous degrees

  • MA Art History and Visual Arts, Estonian Academy of Arts, 2017; BA (Hons) Fine Arts, Kingston University, London, 2016
  • Experiences

  • Art writer, Echo Gone Wrong, 2016–18
  • Exhibitions

  • 'Brexhibition', Kensington Courtyard Galleries, 2019; 'Eyes of Many Kinds', CGP London, 2019; Venice Summer Academy Exhibition, International Summer Academy of Fine Arts and Media Venice, 2018; WIP Show, Royal College of Art, London, 2018; 'Nuntius – Supersonic', ARSi Maja, Tallinn, Estonia, 2017; 'Spread The Virus', Dateagle Art, 2017; Video and Performance Art Festival 'Futu Muhu', Estonian Academy of Arts, 2017; Videoformes: International Digital Arts Festival, Maison de la Culture, Clermont-Ferrand, 2017; 'Come Down Darling Dusk is Falling', Ōlleteek, Tallinn, Estonia, 2017–18; The Artboxproject Basel 1.0, Euroairport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg, 2017
  • Publications

  • Henri Hütt: Romantic Loneliness, Echo Gone Wrong, 2017; Blue Whale Society: A review of Dénes Farkas’ exhibition ‘How-to-calm-yourself-after-seeing-a-dead-body, Techniques Echo Gone Wrong, 2017,; Jalutuskäik galeriides – Troonid on veel tühjad, SIRP, 2017; Internetis ei tea keegi, et sa oled koer, SIRP, 2017; Sensations Unwrapped, Echo Gone Wrong, 2016; Chance has its own Logic, Echo Gone Wrong, 2016; Pseudo: Parallel Realities of a Frozen Goldfish, Echo Gone Wrong, 2016; The Guillotine Effect: an interview with Tanel Rander, Echo Gone Wrong, 2016; It’s Late Afternoon, Echo Gone Wrong, 2016
Royal College of Art