With the solo exhibition Waiting is when time is always in excess and when time is nevertheless short on time Tarvo Varres continues to move along the trajectory of site-specific text-based installations. The central idea of the exhibition is the seemingly universal and somewhat paradoxical motif of waiting.
As a continuation of his exhibition The Shadow of Time held at the Hobusepea gallery at the end of last year, with the focus then on the concepts of self and time, the works of this exhibition – both sculptural and conceptual text-objects – are also formed from a selection of Maurice Blanchot’s sentences compiled by the artist. Waiting, being essentially composed of both abundance and lack, is one of the primary ways of existing in and relating to time. Whether it is an impatiently hopeful thirst for what lies ahead, or an anxiously anticipatory uncertainty mconcerning some vague inevitability, there is generally no escape from waiting. Dealing with it, to a greater or lesser extent, is absolutely necessary on almost a daily basis.
A wall-bound series of white neon tubes, which half-encircle the exhibition space, accompanied by a centrally suspended cloud-like formation of aluminum and plexi-glass cut-outs, compose the material core of the exhibition. Through them, the sentences that Varres has selected – which draw attention to temporal complexities, attentiveness and liminality; and where 17 out of 20 explicitly contain the word waiting – are made manifest as text-objects that possess both physical and metaphysical qualities.
In Varres’s works, the text (and language) acts as a particularly sensitive border between the real and the imaginary, which is why experiencing his works (or reading the texts) can be considered as a limit-experience. All of the texts displayed in the exhibition have been picked out by the artist from a selection of Blanchot’s books and have been consequently taken and placed out of their original contexts. For Varres, the texts placed in the exhibition space and the ideas inspired by them are not simply thought exercises or mind games, even though at first impression they can be approached from this angle as well. On closer inspection, they appeal for something else, but for nothing unthinkable nor unimaginable.
Text by Marten Esko
Tarvo Varres (b. 1970) is currently developing the concept of the fragile in his work. Revolving around the themes of non-self and non-linear time, his works in photography, video and installations are exploring the everyday, space and memory or nature and light, while considering questions of the fragmentary, contradictory and the unknown. He is treating text and language as a limit, bordering the real and the imaginary, in more recent, text-based installations. Varres 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),
Annual Award by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia as member of Group T (1996), and was Köler Prize 2018 nominee. He has taught contemporary art and photography as a guest tutor at the Estonian Academy of Arts, in Tallinn and in Tartu Art College. His works are included in the collection of contemporary art in the Art Museum of Estonia.
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Artist: Tarvo Varres
Venue: Tartu Art House
04/08–03/09/2023
Photography by Mari Volens and Tarvo Varres.
