Jevgeni Zolotko: The Secret of Adam

The Secret of Adam, the large solo exhibition of Jevgeni Zolotko, one of the most idiosyncratic contemporary artists in Estonia, is open at the Kumu Art Museum from May 31 2024 to January 5, 2025. The artist and the museum have dedicated this exhibition to the late curator Triin Tulgiste-Toss (1987–2024).

Jevgeni Zolotko entered the art scene in the late 2000s. Instead of dealing with the topical and political, the context of his art is Western cultural history in the broadest sense, embracing antiquity, the Bible, belles-lettres, philosophy and folklore. His works deal with human existence: life, death, loneliness, silence and decay, as well as hope. While it is often possible to point out shifts in artists’ choices of subject matter or emphasis over time, Zolotko’s art can be compared to a tower: every new work of art grows out of the previous one, specifying and elaborating on what has been said.

The Secret of Adam combines previously used elements and those that have been developed further with completely new ones, returning to the central issue in Zolotko’s art: the question of the relationship between things and language. It seems like the artist is finally providing us with a clear answer. Words are as old as the first human being and inseparable from his nature, serving in addition to the physical body as a way of communicating with the world and understanding it. The realisation that we need both the physical and language to cope in society becomes evident.

The purpose of Zolotko’s works has never been to generate intellectual reflection but to induce recognition. You may approach them like a detective trying to find the clues hidden in the installations, but by doing so you will miss something intrinsic. Zolotko’s works are meant to be inside of, like being in nature, and it seems that the sole purpose of the artist is to make sure that the viewer does not feel alone during these moments.

Jevgeni Zolotko (b. 1983) graduated from the Department of Sculpture of the Estonian Academy of Arts (MA). He has taught at various higher educational institutions in Estonia and has worked as the gallerist-project manager at the gallery of the Tartu Art College. In 2011, Zolotko won the first ever Köler Prize of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia. A year later, he received the Anton Starkopf Sculpture Award, and in 2020 the annual award of the Visual and Applied Arts Endowment of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia. Jevgeni Zolotko was one of the recipients of the national artist’s salary in 2021–2023.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.