PRESS RELEASE

ALVER LINNAMÄGI (1988) & TÕNU TUNNEL (1987) will open their co-exhibition HAPPINESS 0-100 in Hobusepea gallery at 6.30pm on February 16th, 2011. Music at the opening by DJ Wim Grower.

In Estonia, sales of strong alcoholic beverages dropped 13,5 and the cost of goods went up by 6,5 per cent. 75 per cent of women do not enjoy sex and 18 per cent of people regularly practise recreational sports. 14,9 per cent of people would give more power to the youth and 54 per cent of people consider religion unimportant. Free time must be enjoyed 120 per cent and last summer the percentage law was passed.

Our co-exhibition HAPPINESS 0-100 deals with self-realization and the status of being happy. Those keywords can easily be related to people with different bacgrounds, for example artists, bankers and priests. In Estonia an artist has to have a fanatic impulse in order to create. While putting up with the situation, where most of the gallery visitors are friends of the exhibiting artist, where the artist has to pay in order to make exhibitions and where the majority of what one creates is titled an obscenity, the reason to create can be self-realization.
Our exhibition is based on the self-realization of other people. On one hand, we wish to create a language that would allow the viewers to understand that contemporary art or our self-realization arises from the same drive that makes Estonians go ski or drink after working hours. On the other hand, the exhibition is an attempt to make sure whether making or consuming contemporary art can make one happy.
We are telling the viewers that football is equal to sex or contemporary art. By creating a simple background for happiness and making it measureable with the percentage system, we are giving us and the viewers the possibility to let go of reality, to do what they often do.
The quintessence of the exhibition is an interactive machine that helps discover the percentage of one's happiness through numerous questions being answered by the viewer when pushing the buttons. In addition to the machine, the rest of the works exhibited show our attempts of trying out other means of self-realization thus creating parallels between creation and alternative ways of self-realization.

Alver Linnamägi ja Tõnu Tunnel

Exhibition will be open until February 28, 2011.

Supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and A. Le Coq.

Thanks to: Anna Tuvike, Maido Juss, Olga Logvina, Kaily Murdoja, Heli Murdoja, department of photography of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Taaniel Raudsepp, Taavi Kübar, Karmen Otu, Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo, Marju Kurg, Priit Kurg, Anne Linnamägi, Madis Poel, Liis Plato, OÜ Variant.