Margus Vaikre's Stamp Carpets. Gourmet Stamp
The exhibition is opened from 28 June to 25 August 2024. Free entry.
Margus Vaikre (1962) is one of the most fascinating authors I’ve met in the almost thirty years I’ve worked with artists. He has no art education. He doesn’t even compare himself to artists because, as he says himself: „It’s an activity that develops me and is fun, and that’s all that counts.”
Since 1996, Margus Vaikre, as the director of the Tartu Gourmets Cocktail Club, has organised 80 theatrical events for food gourmets and master chefs. For a little less than a decade, he has been painting carpets in his own author’s technique, which were shown at and exhibition meant for drones on the roof of the Estonian National Museum on 11 June 2021. This kind of scale – the roof of the museum and the drone exhibition – is very characteristic of Margus. As he pointed out with his wry humour, he has now moved from the floor and the roof to the wall with this exhibition of postage stamp carpets.
The idea of making stamp carpets started when Margus found a stamp album from his childhood and, inspired by it, started compiling a new one. The age of the internet and online auctions offers better opportunities. The process of collecting broadened his horizons and his knowledge of stamps and history. Starting with Russian stamps of the tsarist era, he made his way around Europe and finally came to old Estonian stamps, and these were the ones he kept on collecting.
In the meantime, envelopes were added as a natural succession to the stamps. It was while studying them that he saw how much information the envelopes and stamps actually carry. Among other things, they can even provide the DNA of the stamp’s user, not to mention all sorts of dates, places and (now lost) addresses. The mysteries are even more fascinating: where the stamp is placed, what the postage stamp and envelope are stamped with, how the person is addressed, etc. Each stamp and envelope is accompanied by a story with historical background.
Margus refused to accept that all this interesting material was hidden somewhere in someone’s album, sometimes even deposited securely in a bank. He wanted to make the small paper pieces large enough to be displayed in public, while finding a way to preserve the value and condition of the stamp. The search for the right medium and technique was a long and labour-intensive process, but that’s what he liked. Margus has now found a special PVC material that is even soundproof when necessary, and a gluing technique that preserves the value of all stamps and envelopes. The work is covered with a special film that protects the stamps from sunlight. Of course, each carpet has its own story of completion, unique and unrepeatable. Now is the perfect time to showcase this fascinating world.
- Reet Mark, producer