Intellectual cobbler Orgussaar
	Elin Kard

	Jaanus Orgussaar's designer footwear, Tallinn City Gallery, 14 - 25 January 2004
	People's Artist Orgussaar In the opening days of the year we were all invited to participate in Jaanus Orgussaar's first personal exhibition at the City Gallery. The Wunderkind who has brought fame and glory to his country and culture has been behaving impeccably for more than a decade. The Estonian haute couture of Orgussaar certainly deserves all the praise it is getting because, unlike many other manifestations flourishing in the local fashion arena, Orgussaar's work is not unashamedly copied from the glimmering screen of Fashion TV. However, the afore-mentioned fashion show has deemed it worthwhile to invite Orgussaar to join them. Not that he has any reason to complain about little popularity among local people who are more or less knowledgeable of the garments covering one's body. With his first big exhibition, Orgussaar descended upon the masses as a genuine people's artist and the darling of thousands. For ages, the exhibition hall had certainly not witnessed such hustle and bustle where the culture-hungry public almost knocks the door off the hinges and leaves deep tracks between the art works. Missionary of organic farming Orgussaar claims to find inspiration primarily from nature and organic forms. He thus claims to support an ecological attitude, and gives the impression of a thoroughly nice young man with green fingers. I am sorry but I personally fail to see any signs of a modern green way of life and preservative-free naturalism. True, his attitude is deceptively decent, and he seems to let things take their natural course, but it all seems to conceal the fact that he is quietly cultivating some home-made S&M. Cannabis rope instead of synthetic bondage, a bee mask instead of a riveted visor, and the role of the dominatrix is played by a little village maiden who squats amongst the pine trees beside some simple peasant meal, waiting for her men to return home. His well-trodden footwear certainly does not qualify as a fetish, nor is it sufficiently fashion-conscious. Perhaps it would have served as a fetish at a time when fetish had its original meaning, acting as a good luck charm of our ancestors who carried it in their belt pouches together with a few chewed bones and a curl of hair from a girl one cave over. Fashion, however, is supposed to be tightly connected with the so-called consumer society: consumption as a ritual process that liberates us from insecurity and all sorts of complexes when we squeeze ourselves into the given model. As long as Orgussaar keeps busying himself with trivia and stacking shoes and boots like toy bricks, he will play only an insignificant role in consumer culture, whose emphasis is luckily on culture and not on consumption.
	Intellectual cobbler This may sound absurd, but Orgussaar is perhaps above all an intellectual cobbler. There is no obvious reason to consider his footwear to be art. In order to become legitimate art, his shoes should stop fulfilling a function. Orgussaar's works have, at first glance, all the requirements of noblesse oblige goods: consumption value or an ability to satisfy specific needs of human souls, a high place on a value scale that marks and measures the sweat and effort that went into producing them and, last but not least, the value of image or the knack of satisfying higher communicative needs, such as the intellectual and emotional. A wedge is driven into this nearly ideal appropriateness- with-successful-sale-strategy by a positive rehabilitating factor - the goods on offer do not visually correspond to the general norm, i.e. are not commercial enough. His work thus leans heavily towards art, and unlike simple handicraft, has even acquired an audience. Wisely, it does not appeal to the audience's taste and wishes, does not bend or bow to them, but lets them instead take a peep at itself from far below. Bondage & Discipline There is no escaping the thought, however, that Orgussaar is quietly labouring away at the foundations of Estonian sadomasochism. He is by no means as corrupt and dictatorial as Willie, McLaren and Westwood. Instead he seems to let the potential client decide for himself whether he wishes to surrender or not. As we all know, most of our world relies on a domination/ submission symbiosis, and even if Orgussaar is not willing to admit it, he is following, either consciously or unconsciously, the rules and regulations of perfectly normal behaviour. Orgussaar is a hedonist, secretly enjoying the bondage and determining the punishment, while at the same time claiming to create without violence. Who cares that the one in boots later feels like she is being fitted on a shoemaker's last? The aim of a proper S&M practitioner is not, after all, to directly cause pain and mutilation, but rather to create a simulation so that the participants can enjoy games of subjection and submission. It is in fact good that Orgussaar's creation is singular and does not pretend to be what it is not. Just like the plastic displays sitting in the midst of artificial flower arrangements in a cellar shop filled with sex toys somewhere on the outskirts of town, which are designed to give customers the hots. In a society where the general public regards S&M as something obscene or classifies it as domestic violence, it is truly laudable that Orgussaar managed to quietly step into the recesses of brains without overtly revealing the meanings. It must be mentioned here, with regret, that it would have been thrilling to me personally to have a taste of the most degenerate of the messengers. Jaanus Orgussaar (1971), fashion artist. Twice won the main award at fashion competition SuperNoova. Elin Kard (1972), artist and curator. Currently works as curator of Hobusepea and Draakon galleries. See: www.eaa.ee/hobusepea/hindex.htm
	| Estonian Art 1/04 (14) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2004 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |