‘Petrified’ centers around the sense of detachment from the world and oneself, using familiar architectural forms from the city streets. Inside the exhibition space is created a backdrop of a nighttime cityscape, where the common feelings of this time and age such as anxiety and fear of the unknown are revealed in a new light.
The stillness of the night is a good time for gathering your thoughts, but it is also the time when illuminated screens and artificial lights compete most brutally for our attention.
The video and photo installations of the exhibition are defined by a continuous but aimless movement, where the characters in the videos or the motion mechanisms of the works themselves have succumbed to the endless loop.
The inability to turn around or to actively intervene in one’s surroundings brings attention to irrelevant details, where it falls into the folds of perception, like the blind but all-seeing eye.
Sten Saarits (b 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist who works mainly with time based media. Saarits’ art practice, which emphasizes repetitions of themes and situations, is characterized by a drive to turn mental spaces into material landscapes to depict the states of mind, typical for the daily grind in a modern society, in a new form. Saarits has studied sound art (MA) and installation and sculpture (BA) in Estonian Academy of Arts. During the years of 2013–2014 he studied in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where his curriculum focused on sound art, performance and film. Saarits has shown his work in Estonia, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, France and Lithuania.
www.vaal.ee
Graphic design: Kert Viiart
The artist would like to thank: Alo Suursaar, Egle Ehtjen, Erik Alalooga, Erko Ever, Heini Kiis, Ian Simon Märjama, Janno Lepind, Kasmar Tunder, Kati Müüripeal, Kelli Gedvil, Kristen Rästas, Kristjan Koskor, Lauri Aksel, Madli Kadakas, Markus Tiitus, Mart Joost, Martin Loik, Rein Kuusik, Sven Sosnitski, Tiina Määrmann, Tiina Vändre
This exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Punch Club.
“Petrified”
Sten Saarits
Curator Eva Mustonen
12/08/2022 — 10/09/2022
Vaal Gallery
Tuesday–Friday 12pm–6pm, Saturday 12pm–4pm
Telliskivi 60A/5, Tallinn
Photography: Sten Saarits