Metamorphosis - timeless art

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M E T A M O R P H O S I S

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T I M E L E S S A R T

Metamorphosis – transformation, playing along the boundary between imagination and reality, being one here and another there – an act, an impersonation, but still maintaining one’s self to return to one’s origins – a fairy-tale that is sometimes even more real than life itself.

These could be the keywords accompanying the photo series between the covers of this exhibition catalogue. Photos are inspired by food and the art of European old masters, carrying a hint of the atmosphere of Renaissance paintings, the same as can be seen in old still lifes. The art of the time had such lifelike photorealistic qualities in its supreme masterfulness that some even provoke themselves to be quoted as being created with the help of modern photo equipment. Art is timeless.

It is remarkable that the heroes in these photo series are not professional models – who would personify different eras skilfully – but are instead ordinary people who are participating in this type of studio production for the first time. Employees from the restaurant Art Priori pose for today’s “photo paintings”. Art Priori, located in Tallinn’s Old Town, is also an art project in addition to everything else. The restaurant is a sort of gallery with constantly changing exhibitions, creating intriguing points of contact between art and society. Each exhibition brings about new thoughts and moods which blend into the restaurant’s rooms organically.

Metamorphosis in Art Priori: Old Town, hall with a high ceiling, a chandelier, heavy limestone pillars, with a decorative floor and wall elements influenced by Gothic architecture, a kitchen with ultramodern equipment, contemporary lighting and IT solutions. Walls covered with photos of the restaurant’s employees, who are not immediately recognisable, at least not in the capacity in which they serve us day to day. Everything has changed: eras, clothing, lighting and even thoughts. Each picture has only one contemporary detail, an instrument, carelessly forgotten there from the present day, inviting us to search for connections between then and now – an aesthetic and existential game in time and space.

Art Priori wanted to create its own fairy-tale, one that would show the creativity of a place and the people working there. A fairy-tale about how today’s world is actually a past world and how this past world is the same where we are living today.

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Official

Tõnis Valdmann

Manager

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

Is it really silence? Is no one else really coming today? Morning started with apples, the day ended with Apple – eggs, a candlestick, one peculiar clock, I don’t know from which era; pastries from the day before yesterday; what people! Fur, no, not fur, just someone’s old collar. Pictures, quite a lot of pictures; baranki, no, pearls; no, baranki; no, still pearls; yes, it was that awkward woman with a long white neck – there was too much of everything, I guess. But does the world move for less...

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Alchemist

Orm Puks

Sommelier

93 x 70 cm, Diasec, 2015

Thirteenth and Friday happens every month that begins on a Sunday... the candle on the table lit itself again?! I didn’t light it, not this Friday nor on the Friday in the previous century. I just didn’t light it. Now I have to ask the cat what’s with that candle. Three years ago the cat was under the table; I wonder if it is still under there?

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Bakery girl

Kristi Olesk
Waitress-administrator

106 x 80 cm, Diasec, 2015

Jaanipäevaks kõrgeks kasvab rohi, rinnust saadik kõrgub kastehein. Ütle, kust ma rada teha tohin – igal pool on noor ja õitsev hein!… No, this is not it, instead it was: “forever young, I want to be forever young. Do you really want to live forever? For ever, for ever…” and now these rolls, rolls?! Women shouldn’t be allowed to run from door to door with such awfully heavy things like bread rolls. Couldn’t all these lovely people who want fresh bread every single day just move away from planet Earth... “forever young, I want to be forever young”.

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Musician

Kaarel Jaksi

Chef

106 x 80 cm, Diasec, 2015

Mozart, Mozart, Mozart, Paganini… cake icing syringe is a violin, a real violin, no matter what they say. Music, music, music! Cooking is like a song that makes one crave a sturdy leg of lamb. Crescendo, crescendo, crescendo or piano, pianissimo, as the last drop of cloud white double cream slowly hits the golden yellow shortcake. Why didn’t father allow me to take piano lessons with Franz Liszt? Already as a child, I knew that music is in every strawberry.

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Physicist

Tanel Kaunissaar

Sous chef

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

Gravity! I’d like to repulse from this potato, but Newton has united me and the potato forever. Gravity is one of the four fundamental forces that draws bodies with weight towards each other. The potato and I are moving towards each other with a force proportional to the mass of our bodies and inverse to the squared distance between us. I want to fly!? Doesn’t Einstein’s Theory of Relativity really offer any option where two would be one instead and the potato would disappear forever? Actually, I like the potato! All is relative, but without Einstein, just like gravity works without Newton.

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Cinderella

Aigi Parker

Waitress

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

Time stands still just like me standing behind unwashed pots. It gets boring. Where is this fairy-tale, in which I could be Cinderella? If I wash all the dishes before the evening and also the floors, and the walls, and the ceilings, and the sky, so there are no dirty grey clouds in front of bright stars... do I then get the right to be a princess?

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Bakery boy

Daanius Aas

Chef

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

I have baked thousands of loafs of bread over hundreds of years. My hands know exactly what they are doing. I know even without measuring how much is 542 g of flour or 137 g of sugar and I know without counting how many eggs are three eggs! Despite the world’s most beautiful midnight blue eyes gazing at me at the moment, from which I cannot avert my eyes, and a tempting pouted red mouth like a cherry turned at me, I’m still not disturbed at work. In spite of everything, I’m still making bread from bread!

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Shepherd

Silver Bekiš

Chef

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

I think sheep made from clouds are fatter than mine. I shall have another look. Don’t know, mine still seem to be tubbier. Ones made from clouds have whiter fur, but this can’t be said during rainy weather, because then they are quite grey in the sky, perhaps even black. I wonder, whose sheep these are anyway? Really, whose sheep are they?

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Cherry mouth

Darja Basnina

Waitress

120 x 90 cm, Diasec, 2015

The world is simply mine, like this fruit platter. All the things you could get if you simply dared to ask for even one small apple or if you look at someone with a smile long enough. Actually, it doesn’t matter. I wonder whether the apple that Eve picked in paradise was sweet? Adam definitely thought it wasn’t. Anyhow, I’m going to eat all of this fruit alone; then no one will have anything to say if any of them happen to be sour.

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Boy chef

Mehis Peitre

Chef

106 x 80 cm, Diasec, 2015

Somewhere behind the forest and the sea lived a humble prince who wore a velvety vest and a light turban. He preferred fine salt in his soup, but they always used coarse; he wanted tomato instead of garlic, but never got it. Life is wonderful. Chilli made his mouth glow and the onion smelled bitter, but these were on the table every day. He would have rather put parsley into a vase and thrown wild garlic out of the window, but didn’t allow these fatal vegetables to frighten him. Even the things he didn’t like had their own charm.

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Dairyman

Frank-Leander Sapelgo

Chef

106 x 80 cm, Diasec, 2015

All the things you could get from a simple cow! But a cow is not just a cow. Nothing is actually just the thing it seems to be. A cow is milk, cream, butter, cheese; a cow is meat. Just like a drop of water from the sky is actually refreshing rain. Every time I slice cheese, I remember banana, melon, pumpkin, the moon, and a reflective vest. I could swear that a cow is not just a cow.

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Milk girl

Girti Suun

Waitress

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

Where are they all going? Like the present moment didn’t exist at all. If I could only stop them, show them to themselves through someone else’s eyes just for once. People are weird. Life like in a market place: someone rushing by with a fish trolley, someone with a bread basket, sheep scattered somewhere, someone tal-king into their phone for hours on end; with the sun and the moon standing side by side in the sky today! Oops, the milk will spill soon; I must hurry and find a new jug.

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Fisherman

Roman Sidorov

Sous chef

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

At pike’s command and my wish, may all these Baltic herrings lying here turn into goldfish, of which everyone grants my three wishes. What to wish for? There are too many fish. The pike is already enough. I would very much like to have a pair of old boots. I’m sure the pike would make it happen. It’s embarrassing to go fishing in such new boots. Where did I get these from, they look like they’re from somewhere else? Strange, but sometimes I also feel like I am from somewhere else. But maybe everybody else is from somewhere else?

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Brother

Riho Sommermann

Chef

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

I’m coming. I already put on my long distance slippers and I will be flying in a moment; honestly, brother. I understand you have no time to wait; you are always busy there. Everything is fine here, only one little thing to solve. Nothing bad, just minor family issues. Me? No, no, brother, what are you talking about; not me, the rooster; oh, what rooster? Well, this is a longer story, I must go now, you know, these chickens... hello, hello... I was cut off. The future is a mystery. It’s hard to understand how my brother copes there every day.

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Redhead

Natalja Kudinova

Sommelier

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

I forgot to take off my wristwatch! Everything was positioned ideally: me, small and lovely, red hair, little green dress, pastel harmony, fragile woman contradicted with a robust vegetable basket bursting with the richness of colours like Life itself, and then a watch?! I can’t even take it off because Rubens is already painting and I know how nervous Peter Paul would get if I moved even an inch. But I have to! The great Rubens himself said that once this painting is finished, time will lose its importance when looking at it, only eternity shall remain. For the sake of art, Peter, I need to leave your picture just for a moment.

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Bugler

Aivar Ohno

Senior waiter

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

I blow and blow, but no sounds are heard. I think the instrument is broken. The people are waving, I suppose they do hear something. I continue slowly, breathe, and blow. Silence. Well, doesn’t matter, I don’t have to hear my own words as long as the others get it. What, what are you shouting? So you can’t hear it! Do you really not hear my huge horn, these powerful deep sounds that have always made the lands and the mountains tremble? I think they just don’t want to hear and if they don’t want it, there won’t be any sounds. Honestly, I’m tired of this endless blaring.

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Holy man

Dmitri Zabolotnõi

Senior waiter

100 x 75 cm, Diasec, 2015

Light falls on me from the left. I’m looking at the light. The light always falls from where my gaze is fixed. The sky already knows where to shine its light. Yesterday, I looked right and the heavenly light fell exactly from there, shone on the scripture’s screen, just like today. I shall drink to this, just like I drank yesterday. You can’t not celebrate such illumination with red wine.

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Knight

Mart Klaas

Head chef II

133 x 100 cm, Diasec, 2015

I’m really sorry, but the falcon really likes the Tirol hat. I have tried to retrain him several times, but as soon as I turn fully into a knight and put on a helmet, on top of everything, the falcon starts to jerk and scream, so my entire armour echoes. I know, no normal person would go hunting clad in armour, but this is me. I can’t go against my own nature and perhaps at least my own bird could understand – after all, I understand my bird.

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King of food

Orm Oja

Head chef I

96 x 157 cm, Diasec, 2015

The pumpkin is not the heaviest, not these huge wheels of cheese, not the ham, or the sausages... grapes can sometimes be sour, but these are not heavy either. The table is scattered with enormously rich food, angst of delicatessen – in the end, this is not heavy either. The crown on my head is heavy, although the crown shouldn’t weigh anything because a king is a king, even without the crown! But from a human point of view, anyone’s neck would start to hurt if he had to wear a bunch of metal on his head the whole day.

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