How could Song of Songs not touch the bright side of being human? After all, it is one of the most beautiful biblical texts about love? It couldn’t, indeed – despite the fact that our time adds its unpredictable alternation of hot and cold to our tender feelings, and the melodies of our songs cannot escape darkness.
Born in 1941 and garnering numerous international awards since the 1970s, Raul Meel discovered his identity as an artist in the late 1960s. Since then, he has been actively involved in creating both images and texts, functioning as both a performance and installation artist. In the exhibition at Tallinn Art Hall, Meel presents two series of images representing concrete poetry: a selection of word-images from The Song of Solomon and a work titled They Are Ours. Prayers, containing a list of forced labor camps taken from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.
Krzysztof Piętka, born in Oświęcim in 1990 and a graduate of the Art Academy in Katowice with a degree in painting, mirrors Raul Meel’s relentless creativity through his obsessive exploration of the Holocaust. Krzysztof’s paintings, characterised by laconic, mostly well-defined forms and vibrant colours, pulsate so intensely that they evoke the terrifying throb of living flesh and blood.
“Evil deeds were not confined to the Gulag. All tribulations, suffering and redemption are intertwined with us, us, us…”, Raul Meel says in the text accompanying his Gulag-themed series. Painted with a confident hand, Krzysztof Piętka’s message, tinged with anxiety, is personal and powerful, essentially conveying the same idea: the place where I live remembers horrors and cruelty, but it is still my home.
The essence of the Song of Songs exhibition lies in the shared exploration by Raul Meel and Krzysztof Piętka, despite their differences in age, recognition and artistic approach, into the coexistence and interweaving of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, horror and sublimity.
The exhibition was designed by Anu Vahtra.
The exhibition Song of Songs is open at Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion from 9 March to 19 May 2024.
