“Form is henceforth divorced from matter. Matter as a visible object is of no great use any longer, except as the mould on which form is shaped. Give us a few negatives of a thing worth seeing, taken from different points of view, and that is all we want of it.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Stereoscope and the Stereograph, The Atlantic, June 1859 issue.
Myymälä2 is pleased to present the exhibition “You Were a Bird” by artist Krista Mölder, considered one of the foremost contemporary Estonian artists. The title of the exhibition originates from a poem by Joseph Brodsky, The Hawk’s Cry in Autumn, which she describes as an inspiration for the project. The photographs featured make an allusion to the captivating premise of her exhibition at Temnikova & Kasela gallery last year “When the dream of flying is better than flying.” a phrase that cleverly translates a utopian dream into a tangible tactic.
Mölder’s flying foundational analogy examines complex notions of flying as a state of mind, the possibility of being airborne, the sway of the aerostatic body, and the laws of how to stay grounded. But on the other hand, she constructs the exhibition as a summary of enquiries that she has been exploring for a long time: the interplay of viewers’ perception, and the constant confrontation with the ever-changing conditions of the space, architecture and place.
Through her exceptional and rigorous research Mölder has achieved a sharp understanding of the most urgent existential question of perception and representation of everything that surrounds us. She turns our attention to what might be a perpetual dance, a dance of movement, ethereal evanescences, air and breeze, clouds of mist, glittering haze, ultraviolet lights, or anything that invokes the subtle materiality of air and atmosphere.
Somehow Mölder is entirely at ea1se describing the rich theoretical framework she has created. The imaginative allusions that we might identify in her photographs –metaphors, outlines, and allegories–, introduce a possibility for thinking and feeling the world as a sort of endless aerial imagination. The dream of flying is not just a vertiginous experience of triumph over gravity but also a shift in the imagined perception of (ir)reality of the event itself if it ever happens. We must acknowledge she has established a fascinating reframing of the aesthetics and kinaesthetics dimensions of being here and now, heavenly surrounded and fluently connected to the cosmos through the very air we breathe.
Krista Mölder (1972) is an Estonian photo artist who lives and works in Tallinn. Her works focus on universalized space and viewer experience or, to be more specific, on the transference of a personal (and constructed) viewer experience through which the viewer has a chance to identify with the artist’s view and frame of mind.
Krista Mölder graduated from the Department of Geography of Tartu University, Department of Photography of Tartu Art College in 2001, received an MA degree in photography at the University of Westminster in London in 2004, and another MA at the Department of Photography of the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2006. Krista Mölder was a nominee for the Köler Prize in 2016 and received the Annual Award of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia in 2020.
Krista Mölder has taken part in exhibitions since the 2000s. Her most noteworthy solo exhibitions in recent years have been “Being Present”, together with Neeme Külm, in the Tallinn Art Hall Gallery in 2012, “Non-spaces” in the Temnikova and Kasela Gallery in 2013, “You/Blue” together with composer Helena Tulve, in the Hobusepea Gallery in 2015, “Between the Archive and Architecture” in the Kumu Art Museum in 2016, a display at the exhibition of Köler Prize nominees at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia in 2016 and “Getting Lost” in 2017 in the Kanzan Gallery, Tokyo
The exhibition “You Were a Bird” is realized in collaboration with Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, Tallinn.
Krista Mölder’s exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
The exhibition is curated by Ramiro Camelo. The exhibition is curated by Ramiro Camelo. It is part of the Myymälä2 Baltic Network, a fellowship program supported by The Finnish Cultural Foundation, and part of the Baltic outreach of the larger Quantum Critic project, supported by the Finnish Ministry of Culture.
