“We could say it looks like a bad trip to Wonderland. Notice that suspicious-looking cat with its bishop’s tiara, and a rainbow-colored vest, blessing by a vague gesture an unknown assembly of worshippers (Catholic Cat And The Holy Church Of Milk, 2024). Elsewhere, a haggard monster feeding on screens (Screen Vampire, 2024), merry aliens (Like Life, 2022), or yet this tribe of monkeys on the lookout for discounts on the parking lot of a “Super Mega Hyper Market” (Monkey Business, 2024). Everywhere, the same fluorescent colors, under electric skies. There is, it’s true, in all those scenes, something of a rejoicing hallucination. But let’s not be mistaken, under joyous exteriors, the world of Robin Nõgisto is rather cruel than kawaii.

Born in 1992, the young multifaceted artist got his education from the Estonian Academy of Arts. Painter, sculptor, muralist, he is also musician, singer, and videographer. From canvas to city walls, from the toys he assembles to rock tunes he composes, the same energy transits all his work, saturated, dense, uneasy sometimes, cynical, and irreverent. One must get rid of the first impression and the apparent friendliness and happiness of his compositions. All this, it’s sugar to the eyes, spread out in a showcase only to coax us. Like a too sour candy, it’s in the aftermath, once we have been plunged into the multitude of details overflowing each work, that their critical dimension unveils itself.

If a genealogy should be traced, we could go back to the fanzines and comics of the 1970s, firstly Robert Crumb, with his offbeat, excessive universe, his fondness of provocation and satire. Furthermore, how not to think of music videos of the next decade and of that unsettling dreaminess that made the success of the mythical film of Pink Floyd, The Wall (directed by Alan Parker in 1982). We should also mention the New York art scene of the same years, which saw the emergence of Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf introducing graffiti into the sphere of contemporary art. Finally, closer to us, it would be tempting to evoke a connection to the champions of Figuration Libre and the oeuvre of the French artist Hervé di Rosa, an ardent advocate of the “modest” arts (“arts modestes” in French). The common ground between all those different movements and Nõgisto’s painting? Above all, the freedom, the one to include all forms of creation, all inspirations; to invoke indifferently Fine Arts and the most popular productions, without a border of genre or origin, without hierarchy of values; a manner, also, to advance in reverse of a dominant taste.

To hold onto only this lineage would be to forget that the artist was born in a country occupied by the Soviet Union until 1991. Considering this, we could be tempted, of course, to add to the list of his inspirations the productions of the Soviet era, and in particular certain cartoons such as the “Box with a Secret” (Shkatulka s sekretom or Шкатулка с секретом) by Valery Ugarov (1976), a surrealist and disturbing tale in which a young boy dreams that he penetrates a snuffbox where an imaginary world opens up to him. Also, “Contact” (Kontakt or Контакт) by Vladimir Tarasov (1978), which portrays in the same psychedelic manner an encounter with aliens. However, and despite the aesthetical kinship, it would be to go the wrong way. Because Nõgisto is of a later generation, the one of a free Estonia, who watched as much “The Little Number Two” (Pikku Kakkonen, Finnish production), “Stepladder and Spaghetti” (Štaflík a Špagetka, Czechoslovak cartoon) as Scooby Doo or Tom & Jerry. Therefore, his childhood was less impregnated with the imagery of moral propaganda and more open to Western culture, also to liberalism and the promise of emancipation by the consumption of new goods.

Ambivalent, heterogeneous, Robin Nõgisto’s painting oscillates thus between a hallucinating Cadavre exquis and social satire. It is a celebration of a certain lust for life, of a desire to disobey and a criticism of ultraconsumerism; a denunciation of the society of screens and of misguided ways of religion, of violence and of dumbing down of the masses. Let’s say it is a world on its own, filled with dreams and nightmares, an insomniac painting that never lets us off the hook."

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Exhibition text by Thibault Bissirier, art critic,  2024