On Fragile Grounds. Sirje Runge and Light

The exhibition traces Sirje Runge’s engagement with light, color and perception. Best known for her paintings, Runge has worked across media including painting, video, and decades of teaching. Central to her practice is the concept of värviruum, or color space: a living field where light, emotion, and structure interact. For Runge, teaching and making are fundamentally intertwined. Teaching being an art form of its own, grounded in attention and experimentation. Light, too, is not only a material phenomenon, but her greatest collaborator. The exhibition will present a selection of works by Runge ranging from the 1970s to the present day. It will also feature a room dedicated to Runge’s teaching, reconstructing her experimental work with colored papers for exploring light.

A leading figure in Estonian postwar art, Runge is a seeker whose practice unfolds as a luminous inquiry into light, color, and matter. She approaches color as vibration and pedagogy as artistic practice. Centering fragility as both a conceptual and material lens, this exhibition invites viewers to inhabit the liminal space of matter and thought, light and shadow, creation and dissolution. Runge reminds us that the force of art often lies in its ability to hold contradictions, embrace impermanence, and transmute the fleeting into something enduring.