The Case

“The Case” is a sculpture by Hannes Starkopf that brings together a company’s visual identity, the permanence of material and the playful formal language characteristic of Estonian sculpture in the 1990s. Located in the Fontes lobby, the concrete suitcase with flowers is based on the former Fontes suitcase logo, transforming an everyday sign into a spatial and lasting work of art.

The story of the work is closely connected to its location. Starkopf’s sculptures were exhibited at the Fontes private school, and the artist suggested that the company’s symbolic suitcase motif could take the form of a carved stone object. Although the Fontes private school has since become Audentes and the Fontes logo has also changed over time, the stone suitcase has remained as a memory of a particular place, institution and its visual self-definition.

Visually, “The Case” appears both humorous and representative. The strong concrete material gives the suitcase motif a sense of monumentality, while the addition of flowers shifts the work from an everyday object towards a decorative and living spatial element. Starkopf entered the Estonian art scene with the neopop wave of the 1990s, and his painted portraits, figures and later more abstract forms established him as one of the most distinctive representatives of a pop-inflected sculptural language in Estonian art. “The Case” carries this attitude forward: it makes the boundaries between logo, object and sculpture fluid, allowing the viewer to find new meaning in a familiar form.