Mati Karmin
Encyclopedia
Mati Karmin is one of Estonia's most renowned contemporary sculptors. His career as an artist is characterised by an intense and remarkably versatile activity.
Like many of his contemporaries, the representatives of so-called 1980s generation in the Estonian art, Karmin received professional training in the Estonian Academy of Art, which was thorough, yet traditional, not to say conservative according to the international criteria. During his studies, Estonian sculpture was predominantly figurative and employed traditional materials like stone and bronze.
Karmin, on the other hand, has been creating almost all his independent work in a rapidly charging art scene, which is characterised by the denial of traditions, the disputation of values, and blurring of borders between the art forms as well as art and its surrounding space. The notion of sculpture itself has undergone an especially radical transformation. Karmin has reacted to the changing situation perhaps in more dynamic, yet also controversial manner than the majority of Estonian artists. Vibrant creativity, with a very professional plastic thinking and perfect material perception at its heart, has allowed him to act as a traditionalist as well an innovator, achieving outstanding results in both areas.
Besides traditional materials, primarily bronze, Karmin has taken inspiration from unconventional solutions and employed innovative materials right from the beginning of his career. Early on, he caught attention with one of his first exhibited sculptures, “Military Fox” (1981), cleverly formed of corroded scrap metal details. Scrap metal has frequently emerged as an important material and source of inspiration also in the later work of Karmin. Up to mid-1990s, he used scrap metal basically within the borders of the traditional notion of sculpture. By that we think of figures and decorative forms that communicate with space, like the conventional free sculpture, and that are meant to be placed on a platform. Having previously only tentatively touched the borders of the classical notion of sculpture, Karmin in 1994 surprised the public with an epochal conceptual installation “My Father”, taking as the material the career and extensive collection of weeds of his father who was an agricultural researcher. Within the same period falls also the display of impressive construction site cabins of corroded metal on the green area in front of The Tallinn Art Hall Gallery during the group exhibition of innovative sculptors.
One of the most grandiose manifestations of the exploring line of Karmin’s work is the underwater mine furniture project that began five years ago. On the northern coast of Estonia - especially the islands - there were numerous heaps of corroded mine shells, which are basically spheres with holes, spires and shackles. Karmin got inspired by these mines and started to collect them. The ambiguity of large scale corroded mine shells intrigued the artist. The shape of the mine is perfect and uniform, while still clearly bearing the stamp of its initial destructive function. Being marked by its belonging to the past, it is closely connected to the complicated recent history that Karmin has always been fascinated with.
Karmin’s entire work has relied on various contradictions. He entered the Estonian sculpture scene as an innovator and the continuity of that trait in his creative biography persists, however the notion of classical sculpture and the classical material for sculpture – bronze – is still very important to him and he has time and again returned to it whether in free sculpture or monumental sculpture.
Mine furniture, despite its unprecedented novelty, brings together the two directions in the artist’s work. It can be clearly sensed how the artist has enjoyed playing with materials and forms, having developed both its meanings and looks, creating a versatile series, based on contradictions and contrasts.
Karmin uses mines as modules. The entire furniture series is composed of only two existing basic forms of mines – the hemisphere and the cylinder. He has created utility articles of diverse forms, resulting in armchairs, writing desks, beds, toilets, cupboards, bathtubs, swings, fireplaces, and more. He has added to the scrap metal hand-treated copper
details, metal mesh, leather
upholstery and granite
and glass
surfaces, thus consciously increasing the semantic contradiction of objects.
At the end of the mine project, the artist created a mobile sculpture out of a Soviet military truck. His vehicle has instead of a rocket a gigantic phallus
of mine shells towering above, with four clocks at its top, showing time in four geographic places of the world – Moscow, London, Paris and New York.
Like many of his contemporaries, the representatives of so-called 1980s generation in the Estonian art, Karmin received professional training in the Estonian Academy of Art, which was thorough, yet traditional, not to say conservative according to the international criteria. During his studies, Estonian sculpture was predominantly figurative and employed traditional materials like stone and bronze.
Karmin, on the other hand, has been creating almost all his independent work in a rapidly charging art scene, which is characterised by the denial of traditions, the disputation of values, and blurring of borders between the art forms as well as art and its surrounding space. The notion of sculpture itself has undergone an especially radical transformation. Karmin has reacted to the changing situation perhaps in more dynamic, yet also controversial manner than the majority of Estonian artists. Vibrant creativity, with a very professional plastic thinking and perfect material perception at its heart, has allowed him to act as a traditionalist as well an innovator, achieving outstanding results in both areas.
Besides traditional materials, primarily bronze, Karmin has taken inspiration from unconventional solutions and employed innovative materials right from the beginning of his career. Early on, he caught attention with one of his first exhibited sculptures, “Military Fox” (1981), cleverly formed of corroded scrap metal details. Scrap metal has frequently emerged as an important material and source of inspiration also in the later work of Karmin. Up to mid-1990s, he used scrap metal basically within the borders of the traditional notion of sculpture. By that we think of figures and decorative forms that communicate with space, like the conventional free sculpture, and that are meant to be placed on a platform. Having previously only tentatively touched the borders of the classical notion of sculpture, Karmin in 1994 surprised the public with an epochal conceptual installation “My Father”, taking as the material the career and extensive collection of weeds of his father who was an agricultural researcher. Within the same period falls also the display of impressive construction site cabins of corroded metal on the green area in front of The Tallinn Art Hall Gallery during the group exhibition of innovative sculptors.
One of the most grandiose manifestations of the exploring line of Karmin’s work is the underwater mine furniture project that began five years ago. On the northern coast of Estonia - especially the islands - there were numerous heaps of corroded mine shells, which are basically spheres with holes, spires and shackles. Karmin got inspired by these mines and started to collect them. The ambiguity of large scale corroded mine shells intrigued the artist. The shape of the mine is perfect and uniform, while still clearly bearing the stamp of its initial destructive function. Being marked by its belonging to the past, it is closely connected to the complicated recent history that Karmin has always been fascinated with.
Karmin’s entire work has relied on various contradictions. He entered the Estonian sculpture scene as an innovator and the continuity of that trait in his creative biography persists, however the notion of classical sculpture and the classical material for sculpture – bronze – is still very important to him and he has time and again returned to it whether in free sculpture or monumental sculpture.
Mine furniture, despite its unprecedented novelty, brings together the two directions in the artist’s work. It can be clearly sensed how the artist has enjoyed playing with materials and forms, having developed both its meanings and looks, creating a versatile series, based on contradictions and contrasts.
Karmin uses mines as modules. The entire furniture series is composed of only two existing basic forms of mines – the hemisphere and the cylinder. He has created utility articles of diverse forms, resulting in armchairs, writing desks, beds, toilets, cupboards, bathtubs, swings, fireplaces, and more. He has added to the scrap metal hand-treated copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
details, metal mesh, leather
Leather
Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...
upholstery and granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
and glass
Glass
Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...
surfaces, thus consciously increasing the semantic contradiction of objects.
At the end of the mine project, the artist created a mobile sculpture out of a Soviet military truck. His vehicle has instead of a rocket a gigantic phallus
Phallus
A phallus is an erect penis, a penis-shaped object such as a dildo, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. Any object that symbolically resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic...
of mine shells towering above, with four clocks at its top, showing time in four geographic places of the world – Moscow, London, Paris and New York.
Works
- 1984 monument of the cloth factory, Kärdla
- 1989 monument of the first national song festivalEstonian Song FestivalThe Estonian Song Festival is one of the largest amateur choral events in the world, a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity...
, Tartu - 1989 monument to Charles LerouxCharles LerouxCharles Leroux was an American balloonist and parachutist.He died on his 239th jump after water landing in the Bay of Reval , Estonia...
, Tallinn - 1991 bust of Oscar Brackmann, Pärnu
- 1995 MS Estonia memorial, TahkunaTahkunaTahkuna is a village in Kõrgessaare Parish, Hiiu County in northwestern Estonia....
- 1995 bust of Alfred NeulandAlfred NeulandAlfred Neuland was a weightlifter and Olympic champion from Valga, Estonia. He won gold medal at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp , and obtained a silver medal at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris .-References:...
, Valga - 1996 panorama of the Tallinn crematory
- 1996 monument to Hugo TreffnerHugo TreffnerHugo Hermann Fürchtegott Treffner was the founder and first director of the Hugo Treffner Gymnasium in Tartu, Livonia, Russian Empire, and an important figure in the Estonian national awakening.- Biography :...
, Tartus - 1997 bust of Andres Saal, ToriTori, EstoniaTori is a small borough in Pärnu County, Estonia. It is the administrative centre of Tori Parish.-External links:*...
- 1997 MS Estonia memorial, Pärnu
- 1998 fountain "Kissing Students", Tartu
- 1998 monument to Carl Robert JakobsonCarl Robert JakobsonCarl Robert Jakobson was an Estonian writer, politician and teacher active in Livonia, Russian Empire. He was one of the most important persons of Estonian national awakening in the second half of the 19th century.Between 1860 and 1880, the Governorate of Livonia was led by a moderate...
, Viljandi - 1998 Estonian War of IndependenceWar of Independence memorial at Ropka cemetery, Tartu
- 2001 monument to Jaan TõnissonJaan TõnissonJaan Tõnisson VR I/3, II/3 and III/1 was an Estonian statesman, serving as the Prime Minister of Estonia twice during 1919 to 1920 and as the Foreign Minister of Estonia from 1931 to 1932.-Early life:...
, Tartu - 2003 equestrian statue of Saint GeorgeSaint GeorgeSaint George was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina and a priest in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic , Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox...
, Tori - 2006 monument to Michael ParkMichael Park (co-driver)Michael Park was a rally co-driver from Newent in Gloucestershire.One of the top co-drivers of his generation, Park died as a result of injuries sustained in an accident on the final leg of Wales Rally Great Britain when his Peugeot 307 WRC left the road and struck a tree...
, Tallinn - 2007 monument to Yuri LotmanYuri LotmanYuri Mikhailovich Lotman – a prominent Soviet literary scholar, semiotician, and cultural historian. Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences...
, Tartu - 2008 Bronze pig, Tartu
- 2010 monument to Marie UnderMarie UnderMarie Under was one of the greatest Estonian poets.-Early life:...
, Tallinn