Ivar Kaasik

Artist's country of origin: Estonia

Ivar Kaasik (born 1965 in Kuressaare) is an Estonian abstract painter, who has resided in Berlin since 1992. He began his studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts in the field of architecture, but graduated as a metal and jewellery artist. In 1989-1992 he studied at the University of Art and Design in Halle.

In 1996 Kaasik won the De Beers grand prix at “The Diamonds International Awards”. Kaasik is a member of German Painter´s Association since 2001.

Ivar Kaasik´s paintings offer numerous perspectives on a visual universe assembled from multifarious snippets of images and assorted views and fragments of photographs and films. The figures look as if they have been cut out of the pattern book of a new human type, as allegories of action, they embody the world of optimistic achievement. Often, the depicted scenarios possess the quality of a daydream. The very motion of the eye racing from one scene or segment of the picture to the next distances the objects from their mundane surroundings, making them shine anew beneath a meaningful foreignness. The past blends with the future, the familiar with the enigmatic. All the determinants of the final images are merely set pieces. Under these conditions, a naive style of realism seems just as inappropriate as the recent tendency in painting to idealized color. Representational painting has become a hybrid integrating a broad scope of elements taken from the construction kit of history. Any sense of homogeneousness attained by these paintings remains in a precarious state of temporary balance. Kaasik´s paintings depict universal landscapes that have become inhomogeneous and whose narrative coherence has been blown into smithereens. The viewer is confronted with the consequences of particular value systems resulting from the collapse of state-ordained socialism of USSR. East meets West, the collective experiment blends with the capitalist game, but also, in terms of painting, social realism and capitalist idealism intermingle. This composite realm conjures strange dreams and visions. Life simply happens whilst art chronicles what has happened or materialized.