Kendall Koppe is delighted to present Kris Lemsalu's second solo exhibition with the
gallery, Rinky Dink Babe. Lemsalu's practice is a multidisciplinary concoction of ideas,
anecdotes, forms and personal histories experienced via a community of collaborators, artists
and friends. Traditionally working across a range of media, Lemsalu merges sculpture,
installation and performance in a universe that fuses animal and human, nature with artifice,
beauty with repulsion, lightness with gravity and life with death.
Rinky Dink Babe is Lemsalu's first exhibition that features her vivid watercolour works on paper.
Painted between the studio and en plein air, each scene is a rip-roaring combination of genre
painting with equal part visions and representations of both realised and unrealised
installations. For Lemsalu, the veil between life and art are blurred, inextricably tangled, one
never far from the other. She is currently producing her first feature film which will premiere at
Tartu Museum, Tallinn in spring 2024. Micro Granny 2 is a new performance with Lemsalu and
collaborator Noriko Okaku. The happening will be durational throughout the preview of Rinky
Dink Babe. Please feel free to dance and celebrate if the moment takes you. The exhibition also
features a response from artist Sue Tompkins, available on the gallery's limited riso-poster
handout.
Kris Lemsalu (b.1985, Tallinn) lives and works in Tallinn and New York. Recent solo exhibitions
and performances include: Rinkly Dink Babe, Kendall Koppe; Glasgow ; Peace @ 295 Church
Street, Margot Samel, New York, NY (2022); Angels Gone Pissing, Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn,
EE (2022); A Snail's Tale with Kyp Malone, High Line Art, New York, US (2021); Going Going
with Kyp Malone, Den Frie, Copenhagen, DK (2020); Love Song Sing-Along with Kyp Malone,
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE (2020); Love Song Sing Along (Once Again With
Feeling!), with Kyp Malone, Kai Art Center, Tallinn, EE (2020), Keys Open Doors, Secession,
Vienna, AT (2018); 4LIFE, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London, UK (2018); The Wild
Ones, Koppe Astner, Glasgow, UK (2017-2018). Selected group exhibitions include: Airing Dirty
Laundry with Kyp Malone, 7th Athens Biennale: Eclipse, Athens, GR (2021); Diversity United.
Contemporary European Art, Moscow-Berlin-Paris, Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur, Bonn, DE
(2021); Human After All, Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics, Leeuwarden, NL (2020);
Up to and Including Limits, Muzeum Susch, Zürich, CH (2019); Metamorphosis. Art in Europe
Now, Fondation Cartier, Paris, FR (2019); There and Back Again, curated by Kati Kivinen and
Saara Hacklin, Kiasma, Helsinki, FI (2018); Steps to Aeration, curated by Sarah McCrory, Tanya
Leighton, Berlin, DE (2018); and The Hierophant, curated by Aaron Moulton; Metamorphosis,
curated by Zdenek Felix and presented at KAI 10 / Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf, DE.
Lemsalu represented Estonia in the 58th Venice Biennale (2019)
Noriko Okaku (b.1979, Kyoto) lives and works in London and Kyoto. Okaku is a media artist
specialising in Animation. Screened and exhibited at International Short Film Festival
Oberhausen; Ottawa animation film festival; Museum of Royal Ueno, Tokyo among others.
Most recently at the 21st Century Museum Kanazawa as part of 21+ project. Okaku was named
as one of '5 female animation artists, by DIOR for their 2021 AW collection, and recently
completed artist residency in Katurao Collective, Fukushima where the nuclear reactor accident
occurred in 2011.
Sue Tompkins (b. 1971, Leighton Buzzard) lives and works in Glasgow. Working with fragments
of language gathered from everyday encounters and experiences, Tompkins' practice
incorporates text, sound, installation, painting and performance. Recent exhibitions and
performances include; Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg; Lydgalleriet, Bergen; Tenderbooks, London;
The Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow at Glasgow International; The Modern Institute, Glasgow;
Inverleith House, Edinburgh; Spike Island, Bristol; and Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis.
She has presented performances and been included in numerous group exhibitions including
those at: Sonar2018, Barcelona; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Tate Britain, London; mumok,
Vienna; Tramway, Glasgow; BBC Scotland, Glasgow, White Columns, New York; Midway
Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge; the 29th São Paolo Biennale,
São Paolo; the British Art Show 7 at the Hayward Gallery, London and touring; MACBA,
Barcelona; ICA and the Tate Modern, London; and Artists Space, New York.Tompkins was
shortlisted for the Beck's Futures Prize in 2006 and received the Paul Hamlyn Award in 2011.
Kris and Sue met on Easter in Berlin.
