Jaan Elken’s painting exhibition “Camino” recently opened in the Tallinna Allee gallery, which includes a cross-section of the artist’s work from 2005 to 2024. Harry Liivrand and Jaan Elken, the curator of the exhibition, on the classic radio program ” Delta” thought that the role of the artist will become more important over time, and with the advent of artificial intelligence, craftsmanship will become more valuable in society.
According to Harry Liivranna, the word should chimney express a spiritual cross-section of Elken’s work of the last 20 years, which would symbolize the artist’s real travels, for example to China, Egypt or Cambodia, but also the pictorial technical research and the analysis of biographical questions.
According to Elken, every person’s life is a journey. “It’s really a collection of works started at very different times brought together under one name for a certain idea or goal, which together really create a bit of a frenzy,” she said. “I’ve actually been a hyperrealist in my sense, albeit very expressive and dynamic, and now the name used is abstract artist. I think I haven’t been one for a long time: the image is back, the narrative is back, so they don’t go very often alongside abstract art, but they can be,” Elken said.
In creating his paintings, Elken received impulses from his travels, for example from the Zhangjiajie mountains in China. “Every time I’ve been to China, I’ve approached the same nature park or the same mountain from a different place. The first time in 2005 or 2006 was perhaps the most impressive,” Elken said, adding that one of the mountains from there it was borrowed by James Cameron for his film “Avatar”. “This Hollywood influence is so powerful that the very name of the mountain is starting to disappear, now it is Avatar Country. You can see how commercial culture does not influence high culture, but it influences nature and in general our thinking and paradigm of how we perceive the world. We are all wrapped up in one big tangle,” Elken said.
From his travels in Cambodia, Elken pointed out the Ta Prohm temple complex, where the Lara Croft movie was filmed. “This is the main one, where everyone’s hearts start to beat, the big trees that have grown. I have other experiences, they’re not all touristy and they’re not just associated with movies,” Elken smiled.
“They are wonderful sights when you see how a tree has grown through the walls of the temple, how it grows rhizomatically along the temple area. Nature and creation by human hands become one. In a couple of images of Jaan, this experience is conveyed in a very associative way,” Liivrand said.
According to Elken, when he paints, he always starts from an image of memory. “My current way of imagining is a bit like weaving a fabric without a plan. What is this person a song about, if what he experienced. Memory is as it is, so these works are also such that these images they appear and then they appear are a little erased and swept away, that I’m reconstructing this mechanism of remembering a little,” said the artist.
“I think that technological tools are now so powerful, not to mention artificial intelligence, that we no longer have to create the kind of perfect images that already belong to advertising and other fields. As a painter, I don’t have to compete here, I have to work in this niche where there is memory, personal framework, I don’t have to report to anyone,” Elken said and noted that due to what is happening in world politics and on the war fronts, he returned to his work. “I never planned this. In the good times, I’ve been black, white and grey,” Elken said.
“Camino” is the fourth consecutive exhibition created in collaboration between Elken and Liivranna. “I think it is a good collaborative partner for the curator, with whom to do one or the other project,” Liivrand said.
Elken prefers to hold his exhibitions in larger rooms. “I grew up knowing that art belongs to the public. The public goes to the large national exhibition halls with white walls. The ones with a flowered table, a chair and a glass of wine: these are a kind of boutiques. I still like to go there in a department store, not a boutique,” he smiled. I run. “Art financing mechanisms have changed in society, the state does not exist as a buyer, so it is really very good that a network of galleries has been created in Estonia. Galleries are the ones that bring art and the artist to the not consumer, to collector”, he added.
Liivrand pointed out that Estonia could do this white cubeThere should be more galleries like this. “The current Vaal looks very effective, but it is also one of the few,” the curator noted, also highlighting the Tartu Pallas Gallery and the Tallinn Art Gallery.
Elken believes that the role of the artist in society is constantly increasing. “It’s about the fact that on the one hand we desire and on the other hand we fear the arrival of artificial intelligence, so the price of craftsmanship goes up and up. It is much more expensive than what is made by a computer, invented by a artificial brain,” agrees Liivrand.
Elken drew a parallel with music. “Why do we want this live performance? I don’t think it’s because we want to sit somewhere with a straight back and a tie. There’s a lot of unexplainable stuff going on in the air that’s not on the tapes,” he mused. ‘artist.
2024-01-25 15:04:00
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