30.05 - 25.06.
Anniversary exhibition of Evald Okas "Evald Okas 100", curator Mai Levin
Exhibition spaces on I, II, III floor; Attic hall on III floor until 08.07
and II floor until 06.09

28 November 2015 is 100th anniversary of Evald Okas (28.11.2015 – 30.04.2011). To celebrate this, an exhibition in the honour of 100th anniversary of the artist will be opened on 29 May in Evald Okas Museum.

E.Okas started his art studies in 1931 and was very productive artist during his whole life. Throughout the decades, he earned several honorary titles, attention and popularity. Versatility is characteristic to the creation of Evald Okas. Creation of the artist reaching throughout the ages has recorded his time and contemporaries, but also development trends and changes having taken place in Estonian art. His colourful paintings are well known, including scenes of theatre and music, as well as architecture, industry and urban life, and characteristic, openly erotic female nudes. Okas has also been recognized as a talented draughtsman, graphic artist and book illustrator. He was also one of the most productive creators of ex libris in Estonian art, completing almost 3000 such works of art during his life.

The exhibition dedicated to 100th anniversary of the artist provides to the audience thorough overview of the works by E.Okas and his various creative periods.

The exposition including approximately 170 works consists of three parts:

1) I floor of the museum - exhibition "Representative Okas", including well-known top works of the artist from various creative periods, some of which have been received from art museums for temporary exhibiting.

2) II floor of the museum - exhibition "Life of an Artist". In one room, biographic photos, self-portraits, diaries, sketchblocks etc are exhibited, while the other rooms provide overview of his creation, themes (Estonian nature and people, contemporary city, woman etc) and series of paintings and prints based on travel impressions.

3) III floor of the museum - exhibition "Okas and "Kalevipoeg"", introducing activities of the artist as an illustrator, first and foremost as the designer of 1961 issue of the Estonian national epos.

28.06 - 17.07.
Exhibition of paintings by Mari Roosvalt "Symbol"
museum gallery

SYMBOL has always been central in the creation of Mari Roosvalt. Composition and content of the entire picture is based on a certain symbol.

The exhibition will include works completed in 2014–2015 and exposed in three rooms.

The first room: works with larger format, introducing to the spectators the themes of immediate interest for the artist. M. Roosvalt analyzes and synthesizes impressions. She aims to be a bridge builder and mediator between "new" and "old". Inspired by contemporary art, she combines egocentric hedonism and visual contemplation with deliberative approach, which is still highly appreciated in art world. She tries to remain in the playground of classical painting, while breaking coherence of painting in her works, adding various symbols and textures. She remains faithful to the tradition of abstract painting as romantic-modernistic spirituality, but also tries to add more objective medium, photography, to some extent. While abstract painting represents anything individual and authentic, photo is relatively objective and documentary.

The second room includes integral exposition of small-format works, which in turn form certain patterns, addressing the viewers with specific symbols we can see around us. Every time, M.Roosvalt adds new layers, spoken and unspoken words to her creation.

In these rooms, the technique is oil on canvas.

The third room includes aquarelle, which fascinates with lightness. The viewers will find a notebook of passed travels.

11.07. - 6.09.
Glass art exhibition "10", works completed in the International Hot Glass Symposium.
Organiser Kati Kerstna.
Attic hall

Traditionally the works completed in the workshop will be exposed in the museum after the International Hot Glass Symposium.
In the second week of July in 2015 the International Hot Glass Symposium will be held in Haapsalu already for the tenth time. It is a unique traditional professional glass blowing event in Estonia, which has been consistently organised in Evald Okas Museum with the initiative of a glass artist Kai Koppel.
Titles of the symposium have always been chosen, in order to highlight the seaside location of the Glass Days as well as memorable improvisational atmosphere of the symposium.
This time the theme and keyword is "10!". The organisers offer to all participants, guests and other interested parties the freedom to interpret it either as the festivity of an anniversary, joy of birthday, arrival of puberty, calculation result, maximum value of an assessment scale or otherwise.

The organisers plan to enliven the symposium with glass exhibitions taking simultaneously place elsewhere in Haapsalu, to expose the best works from previous years and to introduce a different type of glass art compared to the blowing and casting techniques characteristic to the symposium.
The Haapsalu Symposium will bring together the glass artists blowing glass themselves, and is remarkable compared to other similar events held elsewhere in the world, because the glass kiln located in the yard of the museum can be used round-the-clock, if necessary. Freedom of creation, readiness for experiments and realisation of new ideas arisen in the course of work is always considered more important than time. Thereby the participants always help each other. Thus the characteristic features of Haapsalu Glass Days are unique common creative energy, spontaneity, playfulness and exclusivity, which also other people interested in art can experience, because during the symposium the museum gates are open to the people, and the result of work process will be later exposed in the exhibition room.
The exposition following the workshop is started to prepare already during the workshop, providing the audience an opportunity to monitor also the process of completion of the exhibition. At the same time, this provides freedom to the artists to change the original idea, if necessary.

The exhibition held in Evald Okas Museum is also special for the fact that blown glass is rarely exposed in Estonian exhibitions.

18.07 – 9.08 "Blood Unquiet", photos by Karel Kravik. The winner of ArtPrint Young Photo Artist Grant 2015
Museum gallery on I floor

"I grew up in small industrial town of Sillamäe in Soviet Estonia. I have very few pictures of my childhood, mostly staged, taken during the moments I don't remember nor care about.

So I created my own very personal version of childhood pictures with my kids, from bits and pieces I remember and find important. These are the moments that brought butterflies to my stomach or shivers on my back. All the struggles, urges, dreams and desires. Moments that have defined much of my later life and who I am now.  It's strange to look back now and see how the dots connect, almost like there was some kind of grand narrative, a fate, if you will. But you can only understand it when looking back, never forward. It's impossible to project the connections into the future.

I also realize that memories are not absolute, they're being influenced by later experiences, they are changing with us whether we want it or not. This series does not pretend to be truthful in all aspects, but rather my best understanding and interpretation of what I remember In some awkward way making these photos might have influenced my memories they're supposed to save. I'm okay with that, the circle is never round," Karel Kravik, the author of exhibition.

ArtPrint Young Photo Artist Grant has been established by the Printing house ArtPrint in order to enable a young artist to exhibit his or her photos with the best solutions, which are very popular in Western Europe, but often unavailable for Estonian artists. Young artists can submit their exhibition ideas to the competition, from which a professional panel will select the best, whose works will be exhibited by ArtPrint. In addition to the exhibition, the printing house will assign a monetary grant to the winner. ArtPrint is organising the exhibition in cooperation with Fotokuu, Foku and HP.
The grant competition is an annual event held already for the fourth time in 2015.

19.07. - 09.08.
Exhibition of works by Viivi Aavik "Synopsis"
Museum gallery

The exhibition includes jewellery, installations and objects collected by the artist throughout the years, forming a colourful mosaic.

Travels and expeditions have taken V. Aavik from various places in Estonia to Amur region in the Far East.
New combinations and solutions have been born through combining and separating these large and small chips and finds, collected during years and important for the artist, through thinking and contemplating, doubts and enthusiasm, drilling and sawing, grinding and polishing. Several stones and splinters of meteorites, originating from nearby and faraway geographical areas, may have been hidden in caskets and boxes for years, waiting for their revival. Sometimes a fragment or pattern inside a rock is so perfect in its natural purity, that it seems violent and wrong to add or change anything with human hand.

When brought to the gallery, these items have been transferred with thought and hand, and the artist hopes that they offer the pleasure of discovery and knowledge also for a viewer.

12.08. - 06.09
Exhibition "õhuLoss"
Museum gallery and Attic hall on III floor

The exposition Castle in the Air takes place in Evald Okas Museum in Haapsalu 12.08 – 06.09. 2015. Jewellery artists Kadri Mälk, Tanel Veenre, Piret Hirv, Eve Margus-Villems, Kristiina Laurits and Villu Plink are showing their creations from the last years.

Art critics have described the art of Castle in the Air as a slightly confusing phenomenon, hovering and playing in the spacetime. The materials used are often unconventional. The value of the works consists in their persuasiveness, which wakes in the spectator's alertness.

The first impulse for the room-concept of nearby eighty pieces is generated in cooperation with the architects Lembit-Kaur Stöör and Ülo-Tarmo Stöör. With the force of fire a kind of delusory burnt-out castle is created in the exposition-hall. Like in the jewellery exposed, there is fragility and power, unpredictability and honest beauty in this castle.

The illusion is total, as if it you were transported to the ruins of an ancient temple, and then disappears. The columns blend and interwave, become a layered, streaming steam massif. It is as if you are in the cloud. The surrounding space is so close that it disappears, only thoughts are left … The moment and the light break through, the sun rises and the castle disappears.
(Lembit- Kaur Stöör in the book `õhuLoss/Castle in the Air. Jewellery from Estonia`)

Castle in the Air is one of the internationally most recognized groups of Estonian jewellery artists and in sixteen years has presented its creations at different places around the world – in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Hungary, China, Israel, Italy and France. The exposition in Evald Okas Museum in Haapsalu is the third presentation of Castle in the Air in Estonia.

Supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment and Altia Eesti Inc.