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Black Mushrooms I

Black Mushrooms I

Coloured plaster, dimensions vary
91 × 42 cm
2021
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Introduction

Mushrooms are one of the reappearing elements in Eike Eplik’s works mimicking natural forms yet often used as symbol or metaphor within an imagined landscape built in the exhibition space. By recreating plants, fungi, insects and animals in her installations, Eplik urges us to ask what the environment we live in is like and whether we think about those we share it with or whether we even know how to share?

You can drill the holes for plugging the mushrooms on your wall according to the template that comes with the installation.

Eike Eplik (1982) is a sculptor and installation artist. She uses nature motifs for constructing a narrative, utilises the gallery space from floor to ceiling, works with sculpting techniques from classic plaster casting to paper and wood assemblage and found objects. Eike Eplik graduated from the Sculpture Department of Tartu Art College (BA, 2007). She continued her studies at the Sculpture department in the Estonian Academy of Arts (MA, 2010). In 2021 Eike Eplik together with Mari-Leen Kiipli were represented by Kogo gallery at Liste Art Fair Basel

 

installation, sculpture

About the artist

Eike Eplik is a sculptor and installation artist who is deeply fascinated by biodiversity and its complicated relationship with humankind. She creates sensitive and imaginative works full of personal mythology through different visual expressions and materials such as clay, plaster, metal, wood and ready-made. Echoing philosopher Astrida Neimanis’s idea of water-connected worlds, the artist takes a humble approach to all living things, and in her art, strictly defined categories and hierarchies do not exist. Her creations can be described as micro-worlds inhabited by different creatures in co-existence with fungi and plant forms, including their roots and cones. Animating the life forms and vessels that incubate them, Eplik’s sculptures inhabit the rooms in a way that recalls a bird constructing a nest, or mycelia creating a complicated network of roots.

Eike Eplik (b. 1982, Rapla, Estonia) is an Estonian artist living in Tartu. In her formal education, she received a master’s from the Sculpture Department at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2010 and a bachelor’s degree from the Sculpture Department at Tartu Art College in 2007. Eplik received the Annual Prize of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia in 2021, the Addo Vabbe Stipend in 2018, the young artist production stipend KUKU NUNNU of the contemporary art festival ART IST KUKU NU UT in 2012, the Eduard Wiiralt Stipend in 2006, and in 2015, she was nominated for the Sadolin Art Prize. Eplik was one of the recipients of the national artist’s salary from 2021 to 2023.

Eplik’s recent exhibitions include White Dwarfs and All Those Beautiful Nebulas at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, Latvia (2024–25); In the Deep Swamp – Spore Formation at the Estonian Museum of Contemporary Art (EKKM), Tallinn, Estonia (2024); Emotional Landscapes at Arka Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania (2023); Growing Out? Growing Up? Contemporary Art Collecting in the Baltics at Zuzeum Art Centre, Riga, Latvia (2022); My Bitter Sweet Frankenstein Body at Titanik, Turku, Finland (2022); Biomass – Shared Territory at Tartu Art Museum, Tartu, Estonia (2021); and Biomass – Ghost in the Corner at Kogo Gallery, Tartu, Estonia (2020). In 2021, Kogo Gallery presented Eike Eplik’s works at Liste Art Fair Basel.

The artist’s works are part of the collections of the Estonian Art Museum, Tartu Art Museum and the Estonian Ceramics Association, as well as several private collections.

More works by this artist

Porcelain, brass base frames, 105 × 125 cm, 2019-2020
Porcelain, brass base frames, 90 × 80 cm, 2019-2020
Exhibition view: Eike Eplik "Biomass – Ghost In the Corner"
Ceramics, black clay, 85 × 42 × 37 cm, 2019-2020
Exhibition view: Eike Eplik "Biomass – Ghost In the Corner"
Ceramics, black clay, cotton yarn, 16 × 20 × 6 cm, 2019-2020
Exhibition view: Eike Eplik "Biomass – Ghost In the Corner"
Porcelain, stainless steel fasteners, ~ 70 × 50 × 50 cm, 2019-2020
Exhibition view: Eike Eplik "Biomass – Ghost In the Corner"
Ceramics, black clay, 50 × 42 × 27 cm, 2019-2020
Concrete, stainless wire, 89 × 90 × 60 cm, 2021
Open the series
Bent metal wires, wooden board 2021
Coloured plaster, dimensions vary, 91 × 42 cm, 2021
Cermics, black clay, hair, 37 × 34 × 24 cm, 2021
Cermics, black clay, 39 × 25 × 18 cm, 2021
Bent metal wires, 100 × 70 cm, 2021
Stainless steel, porcelain, hair, thread, 120 × 65 cm, 2024
Sold
Stainless steel, hair, porcelain, titanium, silicone, glass, 56 × 30 cm, 2024
Stainless steel, hair, porcelain, glass, 2024
Porcelain, hair, 12 × 6 cm, 2024
Porcelain, hair, 30 × 16 cm, 2024
Porcelain, hair, 12 × 6 cm; 10 × 6 cm, 2024
Stainless steel, hair, porcelain, clay, silicone, sound, pigment, titanium , 2024

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