Edgar Tedresaar and Sten Saarits. Black Gold

Although people have known how to drill for oil and use it to prepare kerosene for thousands of years, large-scale exploitation of this mineral resource only began in the mid-19th century when scientific advances led to the development of petrol, diesel, plastics and fertilisers. “Black Gold” deals precisely with this dark matter that has now become our chief energy resource. It flows inside everything that surrounds us, either as fuel or in more indirect ways, as energy used in the production of our devices, the transportation of our clothes and food, the construction of our houses, vehicles and infrastructure. The scar tissue from black gold covering the globe is constantly expanding.

It is the topic of landscape and land use that bring together Edgar Tedresaar and Sten Saarits. Both artists have, in one way or another, worked with conceptualising and building on landscape experience. In “Black Gold”, Tedresaar’s lo-fi and Saarits’ hi-fi are combined in a new hybrid monochrome visual language, which the artists use to search for something new in this all-encompassing dark and viscous fluid. Tedresaar shapes canvases to match the landforms of Greenland, Alaska, and other oil-rich areas. Saarits combines satellite photographs with sound and animation to try to give an indication of the amount of land occupied by black gold.