Something New Emerges From Decay / Eike Eplik

The work of Estonian artist Eike Eplik is inherently rooted in the relationship between people and nature. For Eplik, art is a tool for revealing deeper meanings: a space for reflection, filled with signs and ambiguities, open to individual interpretations. “As I work, meanings and symbols emerge, and I play with them. Sometimes they are hidden within the sculptures – it is a kind of hide-and-seek; the viewer who looks closely at my work begins to wonder: is this intentional, or perhaps a chance occurrence?” says Eplik and adds that the installations and sculptures she makes are deliberately imperfect, thereby revealing our fragility and transience.

The exhibition at Le Guern marks Eike Eplik’s first presentation in Poland. The gallery space will feature clay works showcasing the diverse possibilities of this material: installations, sculptures and reliefs, which Eplik creates as structures that develop organically through the addition, exclusion and transformation of elements. Each of them is a separate microcosm in which plant, animal and anthropomorphic elements merge into hybrid forms. The small wire structures hung on the walls subtly play with shadow, bringing to mind plants preserved in a herbarium.

Eplik grew up in the Estonian countryside, where daily life was shaped by the rhythms of nature, the presence of animals and direct contact with the natural world. Even as a child, she learnt mindfulness and respect for fauna and flora, and understood that humans are not the centre of the world, but merely a part of it. For Eplik, nature is a coexisting reality, a shared space for humans, animals, plants and other forms of life. Thinking of the world as a “shared territory” is one of the foundations of her artistic practice: “In nature, everything makes sense – something dies, something else feeds on it, something grows from it, the cycle of life continues, and something new emerges from decay. In human society, this sense of meaning gets lost somewhere,” says Eplik.

The primary medium in Eplik’s art is ceramics – clay as a living, malleable material that offers extensive formal and technical possibilities, in which she continues to discover something new. She prefers to work with ceramics: raw clay mixed with chamotte, from which she creates monumental forms; and with porcelain, which she uses for casting and modelling by hand. Eplik also uses metal to create delicate wire forms, laser-cut metal reliefs and spatial structures in which light and shadow are integral to the work.

In her works, Eplik also uses found objects: ropes left on the beach, broken household items, objects bought in second-hand shops, which serve as vessels of memory. All the works she encloses within her fairy-tale microcosms spin a coherent narrative about the interdependence and shared existence of humans, animals, plants and other forms of life.

The exhibition is funded by the Ministry of Culture of Estonia, from the ‘Estonian Culture Abroad’ fund, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, City of Tartu

Personal thank-yous by Eike Eplik: Silver and Joosep Sulev