Enter the metaphysical realm, the world where linear and rational truths are questioned.
The search for new forms and artistic explorations takes the form of twisted geometries, tangled spheres and absorbing spirals. Here we start diffusing the tortured lines between imagination and reality, uncertainty and knowledge to enmesh the fixed understandings of necessity and possibility. The mind needs to be shifted both at the individual and societal level in order to make room for the new which might as well also be a long forgotten truth.
This exhibition stems from the surrounding darkness. It starts from the feeling that the world is crumbling in our hands, while a strong wind blows the last of its remains even further. We cannot see the ever-growing threat of ecological destruction, just as we cannot see the potential new directions and life forms rising from the ruins of the old world.
Can’t See is divided into four chapters, which will provide a glimpse into spaces and times that are not usually perceived by the human eye: from the depths of the sea and layers beneath the soil to the debris of the past and visions of the future. The stories are told from a range of perspectives, from hybrid birds to bacteria, sea creatures, an ancient tree or the ever blasting wind, aiming to present different ways of seeing and experiencing the world that detach from the numerous perspectives we are accustomed to. The moment in time is not fixed, allowing us to travel deep into the mythical past or imagine futures yet to come.
Agnes Denes (1931, Budapest) is a Hungarian-born American artist based in New York. In her protean artistic practice unfolding since the 1960s, she has been embracing philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, psychology, history, sociology, poetry and music, closely intertwining science and art in a subtle mystery of knowledge. Considered as visionary, her visual investigations and formulations range from writings, drawings – which she kept as one of the principal means of expression despite the conceptual character of her art – and sculpture to environmental actions, performances and installations.
Daria Melnikova (b. 1984) is an artist based in Riga. Her principle is that every time something new is learnt the skyline slides a bit further. This forces her to move forward dealing with self-evident things, unfinished interiors, collapsed empires, fictional characters, foreign cultures and her own foolishness.
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.
Gerður Helgadóttir (b. 1928, d. 1975) was a pioneer of abstract sculpture in Iceland and created works in iron, bronze, clay, concrete, stained glass and mosaic. She was the first Icelandic artist to study in Florence in 1947 at the sculpture department at Accademia di Belle Arti and afterwards in Paris at Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
In her work artist Ólöf Nordal deals with Icelandic history and the collective memory of a nation in a critical and analytical way. Her artistic research has been focused on the self-identity of a nation in postcolonial times, the origin and the reflection of national motifs in the present, and the fragment as a mirror into the past. The politics of presentation of animal specimens as well as the fascination with the monstrous are at play in Nordal’s photographs and sculptures. Her work continues to explore the folkloric traditions surrounding Icelandic nature as well as those scientific practices that, in their seeking to preserve and display nature, also fictionalize it.
Zenta Logina (b. 1908, d. 1983) was a pioneer of Latvian abstractionism who worked in various genres and directions: painting, textile art, sculpture. Zenta Logina’s artworks have been described as “the gold fund of Latvian non-conformist art.”
