“Photography as a material process had quite a short life. One could mark the endpoints of its historical moment as ranging from the toxic mercury fumes of the Daguerreotype to the CGI quicksilver of the shape-shifting android assassin T-1000 in the film Terminator 2. Now that photography has been detached from its roots and freed from its baggage of accountability and physicality, it has itself become mercury-like. Liquid, protean, mutable, and fast flowing. Magically reflective, moving at the slightest touch.” – From the essay Mercury by Simon Dybbroe Møller
Mercury expands Dybbroe Møller’s consideration of the photographic into an embodied visual essay, comprised of artworks by more than 15 international artists alongside found material and arcane artifacts. The exhibition explores how photography has transformed itself from a physical object into a mere reference point. An abstract term that we apply to stuff, a part of the crystalline lens through which we perceive the world, a measuring stick that we carry around with us and relate everything to. It has become an ecology or, rather, the very terms through which our environment is apprehended and develops. The exhibition considers how we look at the world around us and how we view history and our material world through the lens of technological development. Specifically, it examines how already obsolete or moribund technologies colour our relationship to now.
Exhibition title: Mercury – A visual essay by Simon Dybbroe Møller
Featuring: Thomas Bayrle, Nina Beier, Alexandra Bircken, Georgia Gardner Gray, Edith Karlson, Elke Krystufek, Jochen Lempert, John Miller, Rait Prääts, Heji Shin, Sung Tieu, Sophus Tromholt, and Andrew Norman Wilson.
Curator: Post Brothers and Simon Dybbroe Møller
Venue: Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia, on occasion of Tallinn Photomonth 2019 biennial
Date: September 14 – November 11, 2019
Photography: Karel Koplimets / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia, unless otherwise noted.
Hay bales from Lilli Agro-Toominga farm, Lilli village, Anija county, Estonia. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
NASA, AS17-148-22727 (AKA The Blue Marble) (December 7, 1972, at 05:39 a.m. EST), medium format photographic film negative, scanned, digitally printed, and framed. Photo taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans.
Andrew Norman Wilson, A reason to wake up in the evening (2016), exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Andrew Norman Wilson, A reason to wake up in the evening (2016), exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Oversized cigarette lighters for advertising, wrapped in images from the May 18, 2019 destruction of the Model Railway Show at the Stamford Welland Academy, Stamford, Lincolnshire, UK.
detail, Hay bales from Lilli Agro-Toominga farm, Lilli village, Anija county, Estonia. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
detail, Hay bales from Lilli Agro-Toominga farm, Lilli village, Anija county, Estonia. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Documentation of Agricultural exhibition at Tallinn Art Hall, October 1955. Photograph by Vladimir Gorbunov.
Compensation image for Mark Rothko’s Harvard Mural Triptych (1962), developed by the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Compensation image for Mark Rothko’s Harvard Mural Triptych (1962), developed by the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Compensation image for Mark Rothko’s Harvard Mural Triptych (1962), developed by the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Nina Beier, Human Resource Industries (2013), Basketball shoes size US20/EU56 worn by NBA all-star player Brook Lopez, Sterile Artificial Tears Lubricant Eye Drops, Pickering Laboratories ISO 105/B07/E04 Artificial Acidic Sweat, pH 5.5. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Framed reproduction of Gustave Courbet, L’Origine du monde (1866), from James H Rubin, Courbet (Phaidon Press, London, 1997). exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Heji Shin, Baby 15 (2017), archival pigment print. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Jochen Lempert, untitled (fly) (2008), b&w silver gelatin photographic print. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Jochen Lempert, untitled (fly) (2008), b&w silver gelatin photographic print.
Voigtländer Brillant 6 x 6 pseudo-TLR medium-format camera. Produced in Germany from 1932
Komsomolets (Young Communist) 6 x 6 pseudo-TLR medium-format camera. Produced in the Soviet Union from 1946.
Oversized cigarette lighters for advertising, wrapped in images from the May 18, 2019 destruction of the Model Railway Show at the Stamford Welland Academy, Stamford, Lincolnshire, UK.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Nina Beier and John Miller, Wintry Mix (2018-2019), child-sized mannequins, checkered suits, imitation designer handbags, porcelain dogs, artificial snow. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Georgia Gardner Gray, Cyborg Sweats (2019), Mannequin, clothes, sneakers, cooking oil. exhibition view with exhibition attendant, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Georgia Gardner Gray, Cyborg Sweats (2019), exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Detail, Georgia Gardner Gray, Cyborg Sweats (2019).
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
detail, Elke Silvia Krystufek, Flagman (2016), Mannequin, makeup, clothes. with Sung Tieu, Alien Refugee Collection (2015), Fiberglass mannequin, tailored nylon fabric bags.
Mannequin burning in fire stock photo, Slovenia, black background, black color, burning, business, iStock by Getty Images
Alexandra Bircken, Scott Russell (2014), leather, nails.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
D’Angelo, Untitled (How Does It Feel) (2000), music video, directed by Paul Hunter and Dominique Trenier. Song written and produced by D’Angelo and Raphael Saadiq.
Glass Hasselblad 500C/M medium-format camera (1986), made by Christer Sjögren at Lindshammar glass factory in Sweden. Owned by famous Estonian photographer Boris Mäemets, who donated it to the Tallinn Museum of Photography.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall
Rait Prääts, Oskar C 1 (2015), glass. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Sophus Tromholt, Northern Lights in Kautokaino, the 15th of October. 5h 30m (1882), digital print from scanned dry plate negative. courtesy: Sophus Tromholt collection, The Picture Collection, University of Bergen Library.
Sophus Tromholt, Northern Lights in Kautokaino, the 4th of February. 5h 55m (1883), digital print from scanned dry plate negative. courtesy: Sophus Tromholt collection, The Picture Collection, University of Bergen Library.
Sophus Tromholt, Northern Lights in Kautokaino, the 6th of October. 9h 30m (1882), digital print from scanned dry plate negative. courtesy: Sophus Tromholt collection, The Picture Collection, University of Bergen Library.
Sophus Tromholt, Northern Lights in Kautokaino, the 6th of October. 7h 3m (1882), digital print from scanned dry plate negative. courtesy: Sophus Tromholt collection, The Picture Collection, University of Bergen Library.
Mars curiosity rover moving and Agricultural tractor with plowing trailer working on farming field. Farming tractor plowing agricultural field. Agricultural machinery for plowing land, HD stock videos. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Oversized cigarette lighters for advertising, wrapped in images from the May 18, 2019 destruction of the Model Railway Show at the Stamford Welland Academy, Stamford, Lincolnshire, UK.
Thomas Bayrle, Dolly Animation (1998), 1 channel video, color, sound, 5:44 min.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
Edith Karlson, Drama Is In Your Head: Don’t Look Down (2015), resin, sand. exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
detail, Edith Karlson, Drama Is In Your Head: Don’t Look Down (2015), resin, sand.
LanParte Double Handle DSLR Camera Rig Kit, leather football
Basso road bike from 1979. Customized in 2014.
exhibition view, Mercury at Tallinn Art Hall.
