Elo-Reet Järv

The works by Elo Järv exhibited at Kling & Bang tell stories of hybrid forms and imagined landscapes in the form of leather art. The artist claimed that she was attempting to make her works similar to living and breathing organisms, possessing the magic of a living thing. Self Portrait as a Dragon is a creature where the artist is imagining herself as a mythical dragon. My Insectivorous Totem is a hybrid between a plant and an animal, devouring a little insect. Landscape contains fossils from Katre Cliff, a location on the island of Saaremaa in Estonia. The landscape stands as a quiet witness to various political and natural events, with fossils being the last evidence remaining.

Elo Järv (full name Elo-Reet Järv, b. 1939, d. 2018) was an Estonian artist who worked primarily with leather. As leather is a sensitive material, having once been alive, she uses it to depict textures of nature and the play of light on the mounds of its surface. None of the surfaces are smooth and flat; they are covered in the incessant undulating movement of different textures and reliefs.