For his debut solo exhibition at the gallery, Jaanus Samma presents Fool, a body of work that weaves new productions with selected earlier pieces to form a layered investigation of masculinity, power and vulnerability. Drawing on historical research and material culture, the exhibition approaches masculinity not as a stable identity, but as a historically constructed and repeatedly enforced system of symbols and exclusions.

Masculinity has long been a central axis of Samma’s practice. In Fool, this inquiry is articulated through a sophisticated cross- referencing of classical antiquity, Baltic folklore, and early twentieth-century visual culture. Classical archetypes – from Apollo to Hercules – are positioned not as static historical models, but as persistent templates that continue to shape contemporary notions of heroism and authority. Samma is particularly interested in how these ideals were instrumentalized in the early twentieth century nationalist discourse, remaining operative in the cultural subconscious today.

The exhibition’s center of gravity lies in its textiles. Two large-scale wall tapestries feature vivid floral motifs against black background; their striking, pop-inflected appearance recalls the visual language of Andy Warhol while simultaneously invoking historical textile traditions where plants signaled protection, desire, and social order.

Three additional tapestries feature pictogram-like folkloric motifs from the Baltic region, merged with explicitly queer iconography. Suspended from forged iron structures, these works exist in a state of tension: the metal frameworks suggest strength and labor, while the textiles remain physically and symbolically vulnerable.

For Samma, textiles operate as material archives. In contrast to so-called official history, traditional textiles preserve the traces of everyday life and coded communication. Samma treats these surfaces as readable sites where ornament and repetition become carriers of marginalized memory. This dialogue between strength and fragility continues in the sculptural works. A serial wall installation features fragmented phalluses carved from various marbles, referencing the widespread mutilation of antique sculptures – whether through time, censorship or deliberate destruction. By isolating the penis as a fragment stripped of its heroic context, Samma underscores how violence against the body has been both normalized and aestheticized.

The exhibition also features a series of four wall-mounted iron sculptures depicting lower torsos, partly nude, party covered and partly broken, forged from metal and evoking both protection and restraint. Together with the marble works, these pieces articulate masculinity as something simultaneously exposed, censored and damaged.

A new series of colored pencil drawings marks a significant evolution in Samma’s oeuvre. Inspired by Renaissance compositions and eccentric perspectival constructions, these works oscillate between explicit imagery and subtle suggestion, often set within lush botanical environments.

The exhibition title Fool introduces a key conceptual figure. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the carnivalesque, the fool appears as a disruptive force that inverts hierarchies and exposes power structures by refusing to obey them. Neither comic nor naive, the fool operates as a trickster, questioning norms of masculinity, authority, and social order.

As Jeppe Ugelvig has written in relation to Samma’s work, queer subjectivity and desire are located within spaces and symbols that appear heteronormative at first glance. By re-coding folk culture, public space and national iconography, Samma reveals meaning to be fluid and perpetually contested.

In Fool, masculinity emerges as a fragile construction rather than a stable truth. Through fragmentation and material contrast, the exhibition opens a space in which bodies and histories can be reimagined. Berlin, with its layered history and vibrant queer legacy, provides a resonant backdrop for this inquiry, inviting viewers to engage with masculinity as a site of ongoing negotiation.