We invite you to the tour at Carla Gannis’ new exhibition with Aleksander Metsamärt!
Five hundred years from now, will anyone understand what you meant by the three eggplants and a peach you added to that previous message? Or perceive the subtle irony of the upside-down emoji? Iconography, or the study of the meaning of an image, is a subtle and slightly awkward art. It’s very nice to look at a painting, enjoy the aesthetic experience and not be distracted by the meaning. But that can be a way of getting eggplants and peaches completely wrong.
Carla Gannis’ Garden of Emoji Delights is a direct reference to Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. An iconographically exaggerated work which, to the modern eye, might seem the ripest fruit of a fantastically free imagination. In reality, however, it is an apotheosis of early Renaissance conservative thought. It is a reflection of the medieval view of the world in the context of the Renaissance, a literary and esoteric allusion to a world whose changes are not inappropriate to juxtapose with the modern age.
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Aleksander Metsamärt, a freelance art scholar, curator and art critic, is the recipient of the 2022 Art Critics Fellowship. He has curated exhibitions at the Art Museum of Estonia, the History Museum and alternative exhibition platforms. He writes criticism for all major Estonian media publications and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Art Studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
