Tanel Rander

Tartu Kunstimuuseum

Tanel Rander (1980) is an artist, curator, and writer, whose creative work includes experimental practices based in language and psychology, and critical study of Eastern-European discourse and decolonisation. The focus of Rander’s work is the tension between subjectivity and the modifying pressure it experiences between interior and exterior. One of Rander’s areas of focus is psycho-geography; in his work however, Rander removed the existing contextual specifics of the term, believing that identifying with the subjectivity of the western metropolis, in a post-socialist periphery, brings countless problems. Since 2010 his work has been exploratory and theoretical, focused on the discourse of Eastern-Europe, through the lens of decolonisation. Rander’s work has had three solo exhibitions relating to this area of study: ‘Decolonise This!’ (2012, Y-Gallery, Tartu), ‘No Borders – No Difference?’ (2013, Tartu Art House) and ‘The Frontline East (2015, LCCA, Riga). The solo exhibition ‘Third Way’ (2016, Tallinn City Gallery) can be taken as the mid-point of this six year survey. For the exhibition Rander considered the genealogy of institutional contemporary art and presented his view using a hybrid of a guillotine and K. Malevich’s Black Square as the central figure. The effect of the guillotine – as Rander puts it – lies in the cultural, yet not principal, revolution of Eastern-Europe in 1989, during which bronze heads fell instead of human heads. Among other things, Rander explores ways to bring those fallen heads of socialist monumental art back to a contemporary art context, retaining but re-contextualising their original significance. Third Way is an on-going process, which will develop according to the socio-political situation in Eastern-Europe and its accompanying mainstream discourse. During 2017 and 2018 Rander will execute a collective survey in the border-town of Valga/Valka between Latvia and Estonia, titled ‘100 poplars’, paraphrasing the campaign ‘100 oaks’ run by the government of the Estonian Republic. The project focuses on national identity between borders, and asks if and how this is expressed in the nation-state of a common border-town. Tanel Rander has collaborated with several artists and groups, including a long-term collaboration with language scientist and writer Erkki Luuk, resulting in the exhibitions ‘Kesktalvine hnott’ (2010, Tallinn City Gallery) and ‘Uridaadi lõpp’ (2010, Y-Gallery, Tartu), the book Tammeöö (2012) and a number of public performances. Rander has also worked with the creative collective 10x10m for the happening.

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Contemporaries in Tartu Kunstimuuseum: Na Kim · Andres Rõhu · Aare Puus · Tõnis Tatar · Peeter Talvistu

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Museum records from MuIS and the EKM Digital Collection; gallery stock from the galleries' own catalogues; auction results as Haus Galerii, Vernissage, Allee galerii, Vaal galerii, E-Kunstisalong and Eesti Kunsti Oksjonid published them. Full catalogue