eiko ojala’s mind notes

THE FIRST QUESTION that came to mind when I stepped into Rüki Galleri to see Eiko Ojala’s new exhibition was: “Is Eiko a woman or a man?” With a name like that, it would probably be a man, but I wasn’t sure. Maybe she was Japanese? Like Miho, Yoko, Eiko. The woman behind the counter told me that Eiko Ojala was a man and an all-around nice guy. “In my opinion, he’s quite friendly,” she added. Her name was Inessa. So, Eiko and Inessa — these were my main characters.

Rüki Galerii was once stored rye flour. The gallery is located behind the new SEB bank on Tartu Street in the heart of Viljandi. The place is wide and spacious, and precisely for that reason ideal for experiencing Eiko’s exhibition “Mind Notes.”

The technique here is pigment print. At first glance, it’s hard to tell what’s going on. It looks as if someone has cut figures out of paper and glued them all together. But that’s not the case. It’s simply a 3D effect. There are various shapes: men, women; some are lying down, some dancing, some running together, some standing under an umbrella. Incidentally, the figures do look Japanese. They have black hair. Pale skin. There is indeed something Japanese about them. Even though Eiko Ojala is an Estonian man.

There are two buckets on the right. One on the left. Seeing them, I asked Inessa if the roof was leaking. Inessa said no. The buckets were part of the exhibition, she explained.

Inessa also tells me that Eiko Ojala is a famous artist: “His pictures have even appeared in The New Yorker.” And not only. The Washington Post. National Geographic. Time. Le Monde. Wired. Politico. It’s a great honor that “Mind Notes” is here, in Rüki, in the quiet small town of Viljandi.

In the corner are information sheets in Estonian and English describing the concept of the exhibition. These images speak about the body: how the body reacts even when consciousness ignores it. Disturbances, fatigue, comfort. The Silicon Valley “live-to-work” mentality is one influence. The fiction of Franz Kafka is another. How authority functions through spaces, processes, and customs, and how a person goes along with it until they no longer perceive that this is how they are behaving.

Ojala’s human figures express this through restless poses. They are strange, admittedly. They bring to mind characters from the film Backrooms, though it’s hard to say why. Also Playmobil toy people. The prices are high. A picture of people standing together under an umbrella costs 1,500 euros. But these are not exactly the kind of pictures you hang on your bathroom wall. At the same time, they are unique and, in that sense, welcome. After all, when you go to an exhibition, you expect something different. Something new.

I think a visitor who comes here will not be disappointed.

Looking at these images — for example, a dancing person — I’m reminded of old drawings of shamans, where someone “flies” together with some spirit. Like in old Tibetan art, where the gods strike different poses. Overall, the exhibition is a haunting, strange place. Inessa says it reminds her of the series Severance, which depicts a gloomy biotechnology company whose employees have undergone a severance procedure that separates a person’s memories between work and personal life. That seems about right.

Later, when I wrote to Eiko, he sent me the text he read at the exhibition opening in August. He adds that this was actually his first solo exhibition and therefore especially personal.

“As the name suggests, ‘Mind Notes’ — these works are connected to our senses and how we notice and interpret the messages they send us,” he wrote. “Especially in situations where we don’t pay attention to ourselves. Or rather, one could ask whether we notice those messages at all. The claim of this exhibition is that, as it were, we don’t.”

And the buckets? They symbolize repetition. At first, the visitor notices that there are three buckets of water. But over time, the water quietly evaporates. They become part of the exhibition’s rhythm.

My main question, of course, was how the author himself feels about his exhibition. In general, Eiko Ojala is satisfied. “Tranquil Viljandi was the perfect place for this,” he answered me. “But no artist can ever be fully satisfied with their art. One must always keep pushing forward.”

‘Mind Notes’ opened at Rüki on 16 August and will remain through 26 September. An Estonian version of this review first appeared in Edasi. More of Eiko Ojala’s art can be seen here. And Inessa (Saarits) is an artist herself.

algún día by tomás del real

“ALGÚN DÍA” by Chilean singer songwriter Tomás del Real is easily one of his most accessible and enjoyable songs. Instantly satisfying, the lead single off his forthcoming album Jakobsoni, is three-and-a-half minutes long and finds del Real expressing all his strengths: gentle, playful melodies, deft guitar work, and that almost half-whispered conversational singing style of his, as if he was confiding in you his most important feelings and thoughts on a walk at night.

The image of the typewriter in the video for the single evokes the literary tradition in pop music and is apt. Think of stories about Bob Dylan and The Band’s The Basement Tapes, where the lyrics were composed line by line on a typewriter in the house they shared, or even The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” or “Eleanor Rigby.” While sounding almost nothing like McCartney, it could be said that del Real has similar sentiments, a fondness for novelistic writing, atmospherics that make a song glow at its edges, finding inspiration in the everyday.

Though the song glides along as easily as a ghost, del Real said that it even challenged him to play it. “It has this very complex fingerpicking that I heard in my head at first, but couldn’t figure out,” he says. “It took months for it to become natural.” The lyrics also emerged over time and the whole composition came together during a week of self-imposed exile in Berlin.

“I was able to take a break and finish up four of the songs on the new album,” del Real recalls.

“Algún día” reflects on existential themes of life and death, the temporary and timeless.

Algún día de erosión / Nuestras almas se evaporarán / Al encontrar otra forma en vez de despertar / Quizá, me han de contar

Which translates in English to something like

One day, through erosion / Our souls will evaporate / Finding another way instead of waking / Perhaps, they will tell me.

Finding another way instead of waking;

“I think time and the ephemerality of things is a topic that’s on my mind quite often,” he says. “I was searching for the most vulnerable aspects of myself while writing this song, the real spots, for something valuable.”

The single was recorded in Viljandi, Estonia, where del Real has lived for the past few years and produced with Javier Barría, who added the synths and other instrumentation. “Algún día” was mixed and mastered by del Real’s long-time collaborator Jorge Fortune in Chile. It is available on all streaming platforms, including Spotify, as of 31 July. The new album Jakobsoni will follow soon. It will be the fourth record del Real has put out in Estonia, following 2022’s collaboration with Lee Taul Don’t Chase the Lizard, 2023’s Principios de Declaración and 2024’s Notas Rotas. Despite this prolific output, del Real says that he battles writer’s block all the time, even with “Algún día”.

“This one has been like cold brew,” he says. “Drip by drip. It took a while, but it came out right.”

karl pärsimägi’s ‘your art is long’ at the tartu art museum

IT SEEMS TOO OFTEN these days that we default to minimalism. We want subdued tones, empty spaces, love expressed with silence, tears that flow only in private. Less is always more, we are told. But in the art of Karl Pärsimägi (1902-1942), I have found the opposite to be true. This is a colorful world. In Pärsimägi’s world, less is never more. More is just more. His exhibition at the Tartu Art Museum, Sinu Kunst on Pikk! (“Your art is long!”) (23 May – 25 October) is worth a visit. A modernist from Võrumaa with a south Estonian sensibility, Pärsimägi was prolific and well traveled. The exhibition hall can barely contain his output (a 350-page book has just been published devoted to it). Pärsimägi was famous for painting nude models, but his most beautiful paintings are of women doing everyday things. Reading a book in Reader. Stuck in a blissful moment in 1936’s A Portrait of a Woman with Pearls. My own favorite is 1935’s Young Woman in Blue with a Red Tie. It’s the reason I visited the exhibition. I wouldn’t call Pärsimägi or anyone a genius, as I am not an expert art critic, nor do I ever want to be. But I can say that I came away from the exhibition feeling happier and freer than I had in a long time, and inspired to do, as Pärsimägi did, more! Alas, Pärsimägi’s time ran out. He was arrested in Paris and shot by the Nazis in Auschwitz, some say on account of his sexuality. He was remembered as a reclusive, eccentric character, who liked to visit his siblings in Viljandi and Võru. In his self portraits, he reminds me of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett after his LSD-fueled mental collapse. An interesting character for sure, one who made memorable art. And also, I think, one worth building on. I see his work as just a start. There is more to be done.

An Estonian version of this review appears online in Edasi magazine.

‘twilight haze’ by fuzzolini

FUZZOLINI’S NEW RECORD is called Beauty Exists in Everyone. I’ve seen this group perform a few times, and both times they were so loud, I thought I was about to go into cardiac arrest. Which is what makes listening to an actual recording, where I can control the volume, so refreshing. “Ah, so that’s what it’s supposed to sound like.” I wouldn’t blame them for the sonic dissonance. One aspect is that’s how rock clubs do it. It’s supposed to be loud. And I also think the group is going for the wall-of-sound effect. On the song “Twilight Haze” they manage to create that same kind of full noise tapestry without suffering from too much messy distortion.

I’m kind of impressed by Fuzzolini’s guitarist, singer and frontman (I guess you could call him that) Valter Nõmm, who looks like he fell asleep in about 1997 or so and just woke up in the forest somewhere, still wearing the same flannel shirt. He has maintained that kind of sensibility, as if he’s still listening to Soundgarden on his Walkman with his sunglasses on.

He’s not afraid of big, crunchy guitar sounds, but these bold strokes are applied sensitively, with the finesse of an artist. According to Nõmm, “Twilight Haze” was one of those songs that came out of nowhere. “Come out of nowhere” songs are mystical. Think of “Get Back,” which Paul McCartney conjured out of nothing. Better yet, nobody is quite sure of where they come from. They just come. Getting a few words out of this tight-lipped cat Nõmm is always an effort. He is a man who speaks in gestures and prefers to let his guitar do the talking. But he did manage to tell me that the song “was created spontaneously in the studio,” in one take.

The original track was just his guitar and drums, played by Lauri Pajos. Later Margus Voolpriit’s bass and Kristi Jõeste’s synths were added to the mix. “I decide to go for something cosmic,” Jõeste says. ” I started to feel a little bit like Sven Grünberg.” The synths give the track its “beamed in from space” feel. The vocals are performed by Mari-Liis Rebane, an audiovisual artist and producer, who sings with Fuzzolini. This too was improvised, which preserved its “raw emotion and exploratory style,” in her words. Rebane and Nõmm have known each other for 20 years and had collaborated before, but Fuzzolini gave them the opportunity to do more. She sings on several songs, including “Balloons,” for which she created the synth sequence.

“Twilight Haze” was the second track they recorded for the record. It seems they’re happy with it. “It carries within it the fluid feeling of moving through the night,” says Rebane. “I like it’s hypnotic quality,” Nõmm agrees. Cosmic synths, heavy guitars, smart vocals, big drums. What’s not to like?

Photos by Nicolas Bouvy

‘robert f. kennedy’ by the ethiopians

I HAVE DECIDED to create a new series that I call New Track. I was going to call it New Track of the Week, but I am not sure if I will write about a new track every week. What if I want to write about one every two weeks? Or if I want to write about two new tracks in one week? New Track of the Week would be limiting. That’s why this series is just called New Track.

New Track features a new track. It’s a new song I have discovered that I would like to write about and share with the world. In this way, I can feature all kinds of music. In particular, I would like to write about local artists in Estonia who are connected to Viljandi in some way, but not exclusively. Rather, I’d just like to write about whatever I happen to be listening to. And today’s new (inaugural) track is ‘Robert F. Kennedy ‘ by a Jamaican outfit called The Ethiopians.

How did I discover this track? I was in a record store in Amsterdam and was looking at a Don Drummond record. Don Drummond was a Jamaican ska trombonist and integral member of the famous group The Skatalites. A lot of great Jamaican recordings from the 1960s were released as 45s, and so many are now available in various compilations. So, it was through exploring these compilations that I came upon this breezy recording, “Robert F. Kennedy.”

Learning about Jamaican groups can be complex. Often I try to find out who the bass player was on some sessions only to be led down the rabbit hole. This 2:04 song was recorded about a year after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (who would have been 100 years old on November 20, which also happens to be my birthday). The song is also credited to the Sir JJ All Stars. The Ethiopians were a popular vocal harmony group in Jamaica and in 1969 released an album called Reggae Power on the Sir JJ label run by producer Karl Johannes “J.J.” Johnson. “Robert F. Kennedy” is an instrumental track off that record.

But who was in the Sir JJ house band? It consisted of Bobby Aitken (guitar), Winston Richards (drums), Vincent White (bass), Alphonso Henry (alto sax), Val Bennett (tenor sax), Dave Parks (trombone), Mark Lewis (trumpet), Bobby Kalphat (keyboards), and someone called “Iron Sprat” (bongos). At least I think it did. Of the group, at least Vincent White is still around and playing. Here’s an interview with him recorded in July.