Tutar Gallery is pleased to announce its participation at Feria Material 2025 in Mexico City, presenting works by Urmas Lüüs from the exhibition “Man! God has created you out of nothing, and this is too often felt in your case” and paintings by Katrin Piile from the series “Idyll.”
Urmas Lüüs’s works focus on the transformation of found materials, using cemetery culture as a starting point. Instead of approaching the theme through the tragedy of the individual, Lüüs takes a much brighter tone, seeing leaving this world as a merging with the highest level of collectivity.
According to art critic Hanno Soans, Lüüs raises the question that has frequently appeared in classical art but has regained significance in our time: “How to ask from the fleeting?” The smaller works presented in the context of the exhibition are characterized by the principle of sacramentality – the invisible and spiritual are present through the visible and material, which in turn becomes sacred through that presence.
Katrin Piile intensely dedicates herself in her painting series “Idyll” to searches that will likely never reach their destination. During these searches, the artist tries to find and capture a pause, a moment to focus on breathing, silence, and peace. According to art writer Laura De Jaeger, this is inseparably linked to painting, one of whose expressions is the depiction of still life, or nature morte. Yet nothing is ever completely still. Every inanimate object carries some kind of activity within it: it has its own history, it is sorted, exhibited, and rediscovered.
The works presented at the Material Art Fair express the connection between practice and exhibition. Piile gives the viewer a chance to pause and rest, but this pause arises as a result of an unceasing and endless cycle of creation and the dialogue with the tools used for painting.
Urmas Lüüs (1987) graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts in the field of jewelry and blacksmithing (BA 2011, MA 2014) and teaches students at the Estonian Academy of Arts, the Department of Performing Arts at the University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy, and the metal department at the University of Gothenburg. In 2023, Urmas Lüüs received the grand prize for visual and applied arts from the Estonian Cultural Endowment for the exhibition “The Owl Hooted and the Samovar Hummed Continuously.”
Urmas Lüüs focuses on combining blacksmithing, sculpture, light, sound, classical craftsmanship, and material arts in his work. He seeks shared fields that operate as hybrids, creating extensive works that transcend fields and media. The artist rarely works with individual objects; he is interested in a whole composed of hybrid forms.
Katrin Piile (1987) is a painter whose work also includes objects and installation-based pieces. Piile graduated in painting from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2010. In 2020, Katrin Piile received the Malle Leisi Art Prize, and in 2024, she will receive the Konrad Mäe Prize.
Katrin Piile’s work engages with the technical skills of painting, colour composition, the history of painting, and modes of representation. The paintings are often executed in a hyper-realistic style, seeking a playful way for the use of shapes to approach her chosen technique critically.
The Material Art Fair Vol. 11 will take place from February 6 to 9 at the Reforma Exhibition Center in Mexico City. The Tutar gallery’s exhibition is located in area B01.
The participation of the Tutar gallery in the fair is supported by the Estonian Center for Contemporary Art.
Tutar is a contemporary art gallery located in Tallinn Estonia.
Feria Material is Latin America’s most beloved independent fair, which celebrates Mexican and international contemporary art in an incomparable context. Rentlessly innovative, Material is an experiential and experimental platform for contemporary art and ideas.
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To view a presentation of artworks which will be displayed at the fair, please email us at info@tutar.ee
