JAAN ELKEN. PAINTINGS 2001 – 2024
Viinistu Art Museum. Barrel Gallery
29.06. – 29.07.2024
Jaan Elken.: As an artist, I create worlds that make claims of visual comprehensiveness, with intellectual coordinates that have guided me in one way or another. I currently work with the architectonics of metaphorical landscapes that are inspired by collapsing glaciers and stone deserts, I even use outer space as a viewpoint. Aesthetics that poeticizes decay and extinction, that observes the intersection between the inside and the outside, provides me with endless opportunities to map the reality according to my own rules. It is rather about searching for visual equivalents to the inner states of mind – the search being based on the knowledge about consciousness as the so-called inner space acquired throughout the years.
If you choose a high enough vantage point, details disappear, colours collapse and forms melt together. The only thing that remains is the horizon, a vertical division of up and down, conceptions of good and evil, and the great dichotomy between light and darkness. The contrasts of metropolitan airports, where the human made futuristic emptiness of the terminals is followed by a different emptiness when you hit the runway, where the rush of speeding is replaced by transcendental ascension, when you no longer can feel the speed/space/time in an ordinary manner – emerging above the clouds.
My retrospective show has a strong thread of autobiographical elements involved, it also appeals to a more universal human experience with archetypes of landscapes. The white-gray-red „Strawberry Fields Forever“(2012) and „March 25th, Snowy“(2017) series refer to my early years in Siberia, where I was born in 1954 – my parents were deported by russians in 1949.
I try to avoid photorealism characteristic to new age phenomena and monotonous minimalism, but rely on abstract expressionism as a starting point – but still there are at least two paintings, which combine my earlier hyperrealism with abstract surfaces – very personal „Linda. Remix 2001“ (1980/2001) and psychedelic „Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds“ (2001) which refers to the soviet era parallel reality. Thanks to Jaan Manitski, who has obtained „Linda. Remix 2001“ to the museum from Bukowski`s auction house in the fall of 2023.
List of paintings
- MOERO, 22. SEPTEMBER 1944. Acrylic, collage, canvas. 195 x 300 cm. 2024. (Viinistu Art Museum)
- IS THERE ANY OTHER REASON FOR AVOIDING? Acrylic, collage, canvas. 160 x 200 cm. 2001/2019
- ABYSS II. Acrylic, collage, canvas. 200 x160 cm. 2018/2019
- TURQUOISE AND ICE. Acrylic, collage, canvas. 200 x160 cm. 2020-2022
- 10 VABARNA STREET. Oil, acrylic, blanket 160 x 200. 2004. (Viinistu Art Museum)
- ATLANTIC CROSSING. Acrylic, collage, canvas. 160 x 200 cm. 2022 / 2024
- JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR XI. Acrylic, collage, canvas, 200 x 160. 2012
- JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR XV. Acrylic, collage, canvas, 200 x 160. 2012
- POEM FOR MATTRESS II. Acrylic, collage, canvas. 200 x 160. 1999/2008
- MARCH 25th. SNOWY. Acrylic, collage, canvas. 160 x 200. 2017
- UNIVERSE – MASTERPLAN. Acrylic, collage, canvas. 2008
- LINDA. REMIX 2001. Oil, acrylic, canvas. 160 x 200. 1980/2001 ( Viinistu Art Museum)
- STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER VII. Acrylic, collage, canvas. 160 x 200. 2012/2016
- LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS. Oil, acrylic, ready made, canvas. 160 x 200. 2001
- SUMMER OF 1979. Acrylic, collage, canvas. 160 x 200. 2005-2022/2024
- OVERFLOW. Acrylic, collage, canvas. 160 x 200. 2017
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