Maik Kalberg

My paintings explore a world where nature, popular culture, mythology, human identity, and collective memory exist in the same space. I use the greenhouse as both a physical environment and a metaphor: a place where life is cultivated, contained, protected, and transformed.

Across the Greenhouse series, carefully constructed human environments collide with the unpredictability of the natural world. Flowers, vegetables, animals, automobiles, speakers, historical figures, fictional characters, and anonymous people coexist without a fixed hierarchy. The paintings deliberately resist a single narrative, instead functioning as visual ecosystems in which every figure becomes part of a larger, constantly shifting story.

I am interested in the tension between the cultivated and the wild. The greenhouse suggests order and control, yet my compositions are deliberately crowded and excessive. Plants grow around people and machines; animals become companions, masks, symbols, or alter egos; recognizable cultural imagery is placed beside invented characters and personal observations. This collision creates an environment that feels simultaneously familiar and impossible.

The recurring movement between land and water is also important. The gree...

Tartu Art Gymnasium 1995-2007

Baltic Film- and Media School 2008 -2011

Greenhouse Pandemic New Wave 2021
Greenhouse and Ocean Dreams 2024
Greenhouse and Summerhouse Wisdom 2024
Greenhouse Protest 2025 2025
Greenhouse DIVE 2026
Greenhouse CARNIVAL 2026