Some exhibitions have a name like this here - "Retrospective," simply and clearly expressing the nature of the display without riddles, challenging metaphors, and large symbols. The retrospective that we are exhibiting now at Haus Gallery is a look back on the life of one artist, Viktor Sinjukajev, who is celebrating his 80th anniversary at Haus Gallery on September 9th.
What makes this event even more special is that Sinjukajev’s last large-scale exhibition was also organized at Haus Gallery 20 years ago when he celebrated his 60th anniversary with us.

During the past 20 years, Sinjukajev has not considered it important to organise any solo exhibitions but rather kept busy working as an independent artist and participating in group exhibitions. All the more so, this exhibition is a significant and festive event, as the author has now considered the occasion to be sufficient to give art lovers the opportunity to delve into his world again.

Haus Gallery has always represented Viktor Sinjukajev's work, valuing him as one of the most technically interesting and methodically masterful artists in our contemporary art space.

The jubilee exhibition presents works from his study periods, it takes a look at the artist’s contemporary paintings and offers insight into the many years of work in between - the period where most of the works in Viktor Sinjukajev's exhibition are from - the 1980s and 90s.

Viktor Sinjukajev is part of the generation of artists who came from the former Soviet Union to study at the Estonian National Institute of Art and remained in Estonia to live and work. Viktor Sinjukajev graduated from ERKI as a graphic artist in 1973 and became a member of the Estonian Artists' Union already in 1978. It was his skills as a graphic artist and making posters that brought Sinjukajev projects to work in Estonia in the early years. His poster designs promoting both political and cultural events at that time are significant. A nostalgic selection of the original poster designs of that time, which were widely mass-produced by the Soviet printing industry, is also exhibited at the exhibition offering an intriguing look back at the propaganda of the USSR.

However, the most significant works of Sinjukajev's creation in the exhibition are his urban landscapes, such as the panel walls of the formerly modern residential area Lasnamäe in their large-scale rhythms. The artist depicts these walls authentically, using a texture imitating plaster or stucco on the painting surface. However, lights and shadows in the rhythms of corners and windows have a poeticizing effect on Lasnamäe, rather than supporting its run-down stereotype. Sinjukajev’s Lasnamäe is an architectural complex inviting you to think and see Lasnamäe as a monument to a living environment of possibility, having cleared it of the noise of people and movements. The artist delves into the heart of the stone city as if capturing someone in a moment of being alone and just with himself. He lovingly calls this series of works “panels” and a rhythm of panels it really is.

In addition to the panels, Sinjukajev's still-lives, landscapes and seas create sensitive variations in the exhibition. One would think there are a number of old-fashioned realistic and traditional views behind the paintings, but far from it. Viktor Sinjukajev also stylizes the most traditional themes. He is particularly interested in the rhythms of compositions, structures of the painting surfaces and always strives to a refined and individual minimalism, whether at the level of simplified motifs or in monochrome colors.

The exhibition in Haus Gallery is diverse and thoroughly enjoyable, yet entirely harmonious, exploring the world through the many years of work of one artist, inviting one to look for connections and diversity within our own space of thought and within the exhibition.

Curator Piia Ausman