Exhibition PARK
Toivo Raidmets- urban furniture
Jaanika Peerna - wall drawings/ performance
opening reception with live drawing performance
Feb. 19th 2013 at 17.00
Architecture- and Design Gallery,
Pärnu mnt 6, Tallinn, Estonia
the exhibition ends March, 10 2013
video of live drawing performance on the gallery window: click here
press for the exhibition:
Estonian TV evening NEWS : click here
Estonian State Radio interview: click here
Estonian Cultural Weekly interview: click here
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| Live drawing performance by Jaanika Peerna at the opening of PARK.Photo:Ave Talu. |
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| Jaanika Peerna's wall drawings and Toivo Raidmet's urban furniture designs |
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| Architecture and Design Gallery from outside with window drawing |
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| Opening of PARK, February 19th 2013 in Tallinn, Estoania |
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| Peerna's wall drawings of air movement along the gallery walls |
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| Looking out from the gallery through Peerna's window drawing |
Benches
Arlene Tucker
March 23, 2013
The inside has turned outwards. Characteristic of their environmental and structural designs, Toivo Raidmets and Jaanika Peerna’s collaborative exhibition, titled “Park,” at the Architecture and Design Gallery in Tallinn, Estonia achieves visual inversion. Understandings of interior are twisted out in their works, which combine design with fine art; they both challenge and engage viewers by actively juxtaposing action with stillness, organic lines with rectilinear lines and forms, the real and the imagined. Despite the great force both Raidmets and Peerna carry from their prolific individual backgrounds, their debut exhibition sings of sweet harmony and graceful partnership. During their creative process, they were in contact via the Internet. New York based Peerna would email Raidmets in Tallinn who, in turn at times, would scan letters to convey his thoughts. By carefully developing their digital dialogue, they were able to create a virtual creative play-space. That is what you are supposed to do in a park. So play they did.
Multiple layers of dialogue are also clear in Peerna and Raidmets’ “Park.” The façade of the gallery has large windows, essentially pulling the gallery’s interior into the street, but in this case all was covered with an opaque sponge-rolled white. Locked out, the only parts to see in were through the striking hard lines Peerna made with the two artists’ names. They appeared etched in a visual scream; loud, grating, high-pitched capital letters. It was as if I could hear them shrieking, carved on both sides of the three-paneled wall of windows. Clearly visible the names are intriguing; scratched high enough to both startle and entice bus passengers driving past Pärnu mnt 6, those in cars and pedestrians alike. I took that call to action and headed inside.
As one enters the gallery, the sense of organization of the procession begins with Raidmets’ benches, which define the first space in an informal layout. One is then greeted with a long rectangular shallow pool of water with an army of upright metal spears. These elements combine to create the feel that one is now inside, yet outside, in a park. This is a water fountain, here are the benches, somewhere in between are bushes and a bed of purple heathers. My brain started to branch out and build on that iconic foundation of park elements as I walked through the grid of benches and stepped on imaginary pebbles. The four-walled park, nonetheless, carried through to a public space’s fullest potential of being an area for congregation and relaxation.
From this pragmatic approach to displaying benches I could immediately sense that there were multiple dimensions to this gallery display yet also an immediate purpose for the show. Indeed, the exhibition was to propose Raidmets’ bench designs for use in Tallinn's public parks. He had asked Peerna to join him in creating an environment to display these benches. They successfully created a space that simulates the happenings in a park- there were sitting, talking, pondering, and of course people watching. The cohesive collaboration created a very interesting equation which I saw as ‘furniture design + fine art = city commission’. To some worlds, whether it be the design, commercial, or fine arts, this is a taboo border to cross, but if one lets go their preconception of how art or even aesthetics at large should be, this interdisciplinary approach can produce more interesting work than traditional approaches. Peerna, at first, was skeptical to the cross pollination of art worlds, but has now seen the merits after having worked on a few different projects that demand her to change hats from the snug fit of her fine art beret. Raidmets breathed an air of comfort and confidence that makes him easy to work with. Together they found a dynamic way of building.
Even minutes before the gallery doors were opened a few last changes were made to the placement of the sleds. Raidmets welcomed suggestions yet voiced his opinion on the necessity of straight lines, which in retrospect is perhaps his attraction to Peerna’s work, which bares no straight lines as opposed to his linear designs. Nonetheless even in my short meeting with Raidmets I experienced a kind of dialogue and bodily banter where a sense of true collaboration was felt. Peerna believes that this might come from his teaching background. (Raidmets is head of Estonian Academy of Art’s Department of Interior Architecture and Furniture Design.) Professors, good ones at least, always know how to ask the right question to pursue ideas, and Raidmets did that, but perhaps this is also just his way of letting curiosity be the impetus for creativity. In the end, these constructed worlds create a stigma, but if given the chance it would be wise for makers and thinkers of all sorts to take the approach Raidmets and Peerna have and learn and grow from and with each other. He is a doer and she is a doer- they are makers of the medium in the moment, separate and together.
An artist's focus can change in collaborative situations. Since Peerna was creating an environment for the benches to nest in that became her modus operandi or her point of reference. Her drawing performance that inaugurated the exhibition set the tone and context for how one can view and experience the benches and drawings. In the middle large window, she drew/danced/etched her windswept lines through the white paint. The windows were covered with white paint (specially concocted by Peerna) to create better illumination for the benches, but the play between positive and negative space from the scratchings let the right amount of light and vision seep through. Peerna emphasizes that she draws not dances, but in my view it’s like the chicken and the egg- one cannot exist without the other. And Peerna is such a visceral artist that the physicality of her art making process happens organically. She moved fluidly all the while having a pencil connected to her arm reaching the window, her new canvas. These movements left marks of the direction her body was going and puffs of powder flew as her strokes made contact with the other. Peerna mentioned in her opening words at the gallery that the winds carry and hold. In this case it brought her back to her native Estonia to celebrate her mother’s birthday and to create this piece with Raidmets. Nature does override in the end, so you might as well take the back seat and let the weather lead the way.
Reenacting that familiar feel of a park isn’t easy to do, but Raidmets and Peerna charmed that feat with the concept of less is more. They honed in on the primary elements of what a park embodies and allowed the viewer to embellish it with their imagination through synesthetic experiences such as sitting on the benches, feeling the wood beneath them, looking a the hand drawn curves swaying on the walls and hearing a windy ambient sound piece created by Peerna for the show. As with any environment, the hierarchy of sounds builds and as more people entered the music of the wind hushed and the people roared. The space transformed from being a gallery to a practical and immediate testing spot for urban furniture. Towards the end of the evening as the visitors trickled out I saw the body language on the benches mimic as if we really were in Tammsaare Park. Some people were languidly draped over the benches with legs outstretched and ankles crossed while others remained composed. The two sleds on display, reminiscent of Alvar Aalto and Otto Korhonen’s bending chair legs from solid wood, brought us back to the season of snow. A white room can evoke many thoughts especially in the middle of an Estonian winter, yet in this setting green doesn’t seem so far away.
For some reason when I speak with a designer I usually ask more why questions, but when I speak with an artist I ask how. To Raidmets I wondered, “Why did you use this material?” and to Peerna I asked, “How did you want to convey that feeling?” Here is the play between functional and emotional. Raidmets' main and only criteria for urban furniture is that it can withstand a good beating from a baseball bat. Seeing that they are zinc coated park benches made out of oak and pine, I trust that they would survive, but I suggested to Raidmets he let us test it out next time. (Do not bring a baseball bat to the exhibition.) Juxtaposed to the sturdiness of straight lines come Peerna’s curves that allow one to breeze their way through the different bench styles as they sit in stillness. “Park” is an inter-disciplinary installation that has multiple practical functions and evoke just as many daydreams. As you sit in the gallery it is easy to travel in your head or just enjoy the presence. What would you like to see as you sit on this bench and who would you like to sit with? You need to take a rest anyways so you might as well, and experience a future bench built for you. Perhaps one day we can enjoy them in the open outdoors.
Arlene Huey Tucker is a Taiwanese American artist born in 1980 in
Kaohsiung, Taiwan based currently in Helsinki, Finland.
