Lauri Koppel’s personal exhibition “Demiurgi Tupperware”

In abandoned Soviet-era cottages, social utopia has taken hold. The modernist idea from which the cottages were built bore the humanization of functionalist architecture. The cottages were designed to offer people a highly rational holiday space, while the cottages expressed the fashion words of Soviet Estonia at that time, such as organic architecture and cornice architecture. But instead of order and cleanliness, something that should not have been there before has entered the cottages. Illness and death. Empty abandoned rooms without hosts live on. Anyone who has looked closely at an abandoned hedonistic sun temple in cold weather will see condensation appear on the windows of buildings. Such cottages without dumb owners, with their indoor and outdoor temperatures, can be found all over the northern coast of Estonia. I began to notice the mental and physical pollution caused by time for modernist expression on long walks. Cottages are not suitable for a market economy. Architecturally tasteful buildings have been tried to be adjusted or preserved with cheap building materials, many have been demolished. Residential houses are often built instead of plots, in the conditions of relaxed planning laws.

The exhibition “Demiurgi Tupperware” is a paranoid view of our decaying architectural heritage on the example of cottages. Time is ruthless and Demiurg is its diabolical sole ruler. If no one is in the room anymore, who is there? This is Demiurg, in Demiurg’s own airtight storage box. If you want to talk about the failure of architecture, it is easiest to start with a Soviet cottage. With its strict geometry, it is a clearer organized space to observe. And Demiurg grimaces. Now and forever. Lauri Koppel is a visual artist who mostly uses graphic and photographic tools in his works. He graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts, Department of Graphics in 2012, with a master’s degree.

The artist is a member of the offset lithography workshop “Ubu Noir”.

Supported by: Rein Muuluka, Ingvar Toomas Heamägi, Mario Ansip, Gennadi Baranov, Gudrun Koppel and Estonian Cultural Endowment

The exhibitions at Draakon Gallery are supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment, the Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko AS.