Tanel Rander: “Angelus Novus means that storm is blowing and the angel of history cannot close her wings. We are all watching her fading into the unknown future, with her eyes still nailed to the past.
This exhibition is an insight to my creative sources that I used to suppress and neglect, while being focused on the outside world and its conventions. In the same time these sources were always supporting me, carrying me.
We have built a pump house on our sources. And seen from that house every source is a resource. An instrument for something. Last year I wrote an article about this: “When Turbines Rotate, while Water Stands Still”.
Not all the exhibited artworks come from my personal creative process. There are also some from my work with people with special needs that I have occasionally done during the recent years. So, this exhibition also includes contributions from Sirli, who I worked with in last winter. Her drawings hold a lot of radiating energy. Oil pastels quickly run short in her hands and drawing is a highly intensive process for her. It heals her mood and seems to protect her from something. My work with her was simply about drawing together. Neither of us had never studied drawing or painting. But we were drawing and we were painting. And it had good influence on us.
The central point of this exhibition is a personal symbol of my own. It was waiting for more than 10 years until I decided to show it in public. But then a heavy storm started to blow and my works that were mere abstractions, something that I had used mostly for myself, got exposed to it. Such storms can also be seen as teeth of time that crack all meanings that have been nailed to temporality and eat everything that is up to date. I will see what will be left of these works. The only sail in this storm that I have consciously hoisted is Angelus Novus – the fading angel of history, carried away by the wind.
I thank everyone who has supported me on my journey. Regarding this exhibition, Jelena Jokic Grobler played a very important role in helping me with means of psychodrama and art therapy. In latest times I was also influenced by Borut Holland, with who I shared some wonderous coincidences. I also thank people from Kärdla social centre, I thank Estonian Cultural Endowment and MTÜ Sada Paplit for supporting this exhibition and I also thank the people of Art Smart for being dedicated to their work.”
Tanel Rander (1980) is an artist, curator, and writer (also goes by the pseudonyme chaneldior), whose creative work includes experimental practices based in language and psychology, and critical study of Eastern-European discourse and decolonisation. The focus of Rander’s work is the tension between subjectivity and the modifying pressure it experiences between interior and exterior. Rander has worked as a lawyer and attorney, since 2009 he is a freelance artist. In 2018 he initiated the independent exhibition space ‘Brivibas Galerija’ in Valka.
Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.
