„What I’d Come to See had Already Gone”

The title of the exhibition, drawn from Roy Scranton’s book We’re Doomed. Now what? Essays on War and Climate Change (2018), expresses a quest with an uncertain destination. The boundaries between past, present and future seem to blur throughout an experience marked by the transformative passage of time and memory. Through various lens-based media, both real and imaginary landscapes emerge, characterized or animated, depending on the artist, by shadows and lights, dust and fog, cracks and fingerprints. The liminal spaces feel inhabited by intangible presences. The mostly newly-created works, amongst which two site-specific installations and a hand-bound book, also invite reflection on how photography seizes moments that vanish, both as a revelation and as a proof of their past existence, like theorised by Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida (1980).

SERGE ECKER (http://sergeecker.com/)

In murmurare, Serge Ecker investigates the ghostly imprint of human absence in landscapes shaped by an industrial past, capturing traces of survival rather than ruins, while evoking both personal and collective anxieties about time and loss.

AAP TEPPER (https://aaptepper.com/)

By uncovering hidden layers of time and material decay, Aap Tepper reimagines archival photography in Long Exposures, transforming historical glass plate negatives into new visual artifacts that challenge perception and memory.

BIRGIT PÜVE (https://www.birgitpuve.com/)

Drawing on depopulated landscapes where the mountains seem to dissolve into the sky, Birgit Püve explores the interplay between solitude, exile, and mystical oneness in Ihidaya, reflecting on the shaping of mental and spiritual worlds.

Audience programme:

5 April, 3 PM exhibition tour with the artists and curator (in Estonian and English)

26 April, 3 PM exhibition tour with the curator (in English)

17 May, 7 PM exhibition tour with the artist Aap Tepper and the curator (in Estonian and English)

Graphic design: Janno Saft

Technical assistance: Matti Kapanen

Translations: Kadi Sutter

Supporters: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Kultur lx Arts Council Luxembourg, Bourse Bert Theis (by FOCUNA, National Culture Fund of Luxembourg), Viljandi Town Council, Artproof