Pärnu hosts joint exhibition by painters Mari Roosvalt and Jaan Elken

The Pärnu Museum of New Art (MONA) opened a joint retrospective exhibition titled "Dialoog" (Dialogue) on 12 September, bringing together works by Estonian painters Mari Roosvalt and Jaan Elken created over the past quarter century.

According to Roosvalt, while the two artists differ in technique — Elken works primarily in acrylic, whereas she has built her practice around oil paint — they share a similar attitude toward this artistic dialogue. She noted that many of their themes overlap, particularly ecological and political subjects, and that both artists closely follow developments in the art world and their surroundings.

Elken described the pair as painting innovators connected through technique, presenting in this exhibition a bold, forceful style of painting rich with lively brushwork, palette-knife textures, collaged elements, flags and slogans. He characterized the result as a kind of painting hybrid carrying echoes of early pop art. He also said the process of assembling the exhibition revealed an unexpectedly large number of connections between their respective bodies of work, and thanked Roosvalt for her trust in the collaboration.

The "Dialoog" exhibition at the Pärnu Museum of New Art will remain on view until 18 October.