The cultural exhibition “OP” visited the house of the glass artist Rait Prääts and the graphic designer Sirje Eelma, where a significant number of works of art have accumulated during their 50 years of activity.
As a broader theme, the connection between humans and technology shines through Prääts’ works. This is what the artist’s 2022 exhibition “Chip Crisis” was called. “At the beginning I thought of calling this exhibition ‘Augmented Reality’. Natural evolution has evolved up to man and now artificial intelligence has arrived. It is here to stay, it is an absolute postulate, it is no longer there way around it. This is the “A kind of augmented reality where artificial intelligence across our entire social network has chipped us. All these algorithms are working to chip away at us and a confluence between natural evolution and artificial revolution has emerged,” recalled Prääts, who likes to use other materials in his works besides glass, and who has now taken up the theme of fossils again.
“I like to jump – I mean, I’m not afraid to tackle a different topic. I started as a stained glass artist. But now I have cobblestones and glass in front of me. I have developed one of these signature techniques: I use different cement mixtures. In any case, I tried not to become like a material idiot. I’m very interested in how to put these different materials together, it’s an exciting challenge,” explained the artist, who works in a home studio and enjoys the meditative nature of creative moments. “When I’m in the studio, I get some ideas and I think about those ideas and it’s a total meditation. When I see my idea in my mind’s eye, it’s a shame that no one else can see it. And it seems impossible to leave it like that. And then I’ll take it back and reveal the idea. And then I’ll have a little mental nudge that, okay, now some other people will see it.”
2024-01-13 14:13:00
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