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Photo reportage from the exhibition ‘Shadow of Time’ by Tarvo Varres at the Hobusepea gallery

Shadow of Time presents a new body of text-based works with sentences by Maurice Blanchot in aluminium, plexiglas and white neon.

Ground floor:

SOLITUDE HIDES ME FROM SOLITUDE, SOMETIMES

—YES, THAT’S IT, INEXCHANGABLE IN AS MUCH AS INTERCHANGABLE, THE UNIQUE SOMEONE WHO RECOGNIZES HIMSELF ONLY IN THE UNIQUE SOMEONE WHO YOU ARE

FRAGILITY THAT IS NOT OF LIFE, FRAGILITY NOT OF THAT WHICH BREAKS ITSELF APART, BUT OF THE BREAKING APART, THAT I CANNOT REACH, EVEN IN THE COLLAPSE OF THE SELF THAT GIVES UP AND GIVES ITS PLACE UP TO THE OTHER

BETWEEN YOU AND ME IT IS LIKE BETWEEN SOMETHING THAT IS MORE THAN YOU AND SOMETHING THAT IS LESS THAN ME: MAN AND MAN

ONE’S THINKING ABOUT ME MAKES ME FEEL THIS SELF; ONE’S NOT THINKING ABOUT ME LEAVES ME IN THIS SELF THAT EXCEEDS ME

– AT LEAST DISAPPEAR IN THIS THOUGHT

Basement:

HOW LONG THIS LASTED I CAN’T IMAGINE, IT WASN’T AN IMAGINARY TIME, IT ALSO DIDN’T BELONG TO THE TIME OF THINGS THAT HAPPEN

HE CAUGHT HIMSELF – MELANCHOLY SURPRISE – HOPING, FEARING: AT THE LIMIT

OF THESE TWO WORDS

WAITING IS WHEN TIME IS ALWAYS IN EXCESS AND WHEN TIME IS NEVERTHELESS SHORT ON TIME

THIS OVERABUNDANT LACK OF TIME IS THE DURATION OF WAITING

IN WAITING, THE TIME THAT ALLOWS HIM TO WAIT IS LOST SO THAT IT CAN BETTER RESPOND TO WAITING

WAITING THAT TAKES PLACE IN TIME OPENS TIME TO THE ABSENCE OF TIME, WHERE THERE IS NO REASON TO WAIT

THE ABSENCE OF TIME IS WHAT LETS HIM WAIT

Tarvo Varres’s solo exhibition, Shadow of Time, is a site-specific text-based installation, embodying sentences from Maurice Blanchot as sculptural and conceptual objects. Revolving around the themes of multidimensional ambiguities of both the self and time, the work explores the boundaries of text and emotion, the self and the other, the real and the imaginary, while considering questions of multiplicity, the obscure and the contradictory.

In Varres’s artwork, text and language function as an especially sensitive boundary between the real and the imaginary. Therefore the act of experiencing and reading the work can be viewed as a limit experience or a borderline case. All phrases and sentences used in the current work have been selected by the artist and removed from their original contexts in three different books by Maurice Blanchot. The issues that Varres has posed with his work are not thought exercises, even if they may first appear so. Upon closer observation the pieces aim at something else, though nothing unimaginable – to put oneself totally in question, to challenge the concept of time, to disappear into thoughts…

Biography:

Tarvo Varres (b. 1970) currently researches the concepts of non-self and nonlinear time in his work. Varres is known for his series of photographs, Portraits (1996), Corners Series (2013),

as well as videos and installations using sound, text and light, including Notes on Non-Self (2018), The Shadow of a Flame (2015), Recording Floor (2015). He started exhibiting institutionally in 1991 with the group exhibition Guide to Intronomadism in Tallinn Art Hall; is the recipient of the Young Photographer Award (1992), the Annual Award of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia as a member of Group T (1996), and was a Köler Prize 2018 nominee. He has taught contemporary art and photography at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn and at Tartu Art College. His works are included in the collection of contemporary art of the Art Museum of Estonia.

The artist’s gratitude goes to: Maria Esko, Marten Esko, Mari Männa, Ian Simon Märjamaa, Anti Saar, Sten Saarits, Anna Shkodenko, Kirill Tulin, Mari Volens, Neoonreklaam OÜ, Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Exhibition by Tarvo Varres
Title: Shadow of Time
Open: 16.12.2022-09.01.2023
Hobusepea Gallery, Hobusepea 2, Tallinn.
Wed-Mon 11.00-18.00

Photography: Tarvo Varres & Anna Mari Liivrand