Kai Art Center presents On Fragile Grounds. Sirje Runge and Light, a major solo exhibition spanning five decades of work by Sirje Runge (b. 1950, Tallinn), one of the central figures of Estonian postwar art. The exhibition traces Runge’s lifelong exploration of light, color, and perception, from her geometric experiments of the 1970s to recent large-scale projects, and reconstructs her pioneering teaching practice. The exhibition is curated by Mėta Valiušaitytė (FR/LT). The exhibition is part of the main program of the Tallinn Photomonth 2025 contemporary art biennial.

Bringing together works created across her extensive career, this exhibition presents Runge as a seeker whose artistic practice unfolds as an inquiry into color as light and teaching as a form of creation. A separate room is dedicated to Runge’s student-focused teaching method, which is a crucial part of both her aesthetics and artistic practice. It features a reconstruction of her experimental work, with colored papers as well as selection of reflections from her former students, offering a glimpse into the poetic and meditative atmosphere of Runge’s classes.

For the first time, the exhibition also presents a time-lapse video of Great Love / Beautiful Rotting (2003–2021), documenting the gradual transformation of a ten-meter silver-painted canvas that has been exposed to the forces of nature for years. Today, Runge continues to build on these works in a project she describes as her most important to date: “I am working with time, and with my own life.”

Sirje Runge. Photo: Kaupo Kikkas

One of the highlights of On Fragile Grounds is bringing together the Landscape (1981-1994) series, presented together in a single room for the first time since the 1980’s. Displayed as Runge originally envisioned—in simple, light wooden frames—the paintings open up an immersive field of tension that calls for slow and attentive looking. The exhibition also includes works from her Light (1979-1995) series. Runge’s canvases stage light as a fragile phenomenon, unfolding at the edge of darkness. Here, color starts to become a luminous matter consisting of space, presence, and vibration.

Centering fragility as both a conceptual and material lens, this exhibition invites viewers to inhabit the liminal space of matter and thought, light and shadow, creation and dissolution. In today’s polarized times, Runge reminds us that the force of art often lies in its ability to hold contradictions, embrace impermanence, and transmute the fleeting into something enduring.

Landscape XXIX, 1985, 90x100cm, oil on canvas, Collection of the Postimees Foundation. Photo: Stanislav Stepaško

In collaboration with the artist, the exhibition’s architecture was designed by Valentina Dodi and Suzon Auber of the Paris-based studio Scénografiá, with graphic design by Igor Devernay.

The works on view come from both institutional and private collections, including the Art Museum of Estonia, Tartu Art Museum, Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Estonian Artists’ Association, Institute of Chemical and Biological Physics, Tartu Observatory of the University of Tartu, and Postimees Foundation, as well as from the private collections of Piia Kallas, Reigo Kuivjõgi, Lilika and Riivo Sinijärv, Kristi Tiivas, Bruno Tomberg, Erkki-Sven Tüür, and Marika Valk, among others.

Sirje Runge graduated from the Estonian State Art Institute in 1975 with a degree in industrial art. She was one of the initiators of the exhibition Harku ’75, held at the Institute of Experimental Biology in Harku, which is often regarded as the last unofficial exhibition in Soviet Estonia. In 1976–1977, Runge designed kindergarten playgrounds for the Pärnu KEK construction company. In the early 2000s, she developed the series Dance Macabre (2001–2003) and large-scale painting Great Love (2003), which culminated in her monumental work Great Love / Beautiful Rotting (2021). The ten-meter painting was installed outdoors at the Estonian Open Air Museum on a specially constructed metal frame and left to decompose naturally under the forces of wind, rain, and time.

On Fragile Grounds. Sirje Runge and Light is open at Kai Art Center from October 11, 2025, to February 22, 2026.

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment, the City of Tallinn, WIRE (Widening Innovation + Research Excellence in FilmEU), and Akzo Nobel.