You are welcome to the opening of Ove Maidla and Silja Truus’ co-exhibition Lightdark in Vabaduse gallery at 18:00 on Friday, January 5th, 2024. Exhibition will be open until January 31st, 2024.
At first view, Ove Maidla’s graphic art and Silja Truus’s sculptures seem to be connected by the almost complete absence of colors. The sharply contrasting linocuts form a symbiotic whole with powerful shapes. Though upon closer inspection the observer may notice that Maidla’s black is not always entirely black and there are colorful details in Truus’ sculptures, the overall impression is still black-and-white. There is confident simplicity and quiet certainty in both artists’ work.
Human life unfolds through darkness and light, every moment in life exists somewhere between heaven and hell, goodness and evil, happiness and despair. When to look at this interplay of black and white, brightness and darkness from a distance and to place all these on one canvas then such depth and beauty will be revealed that we might not see in our darkest or brightest moments, nor in the daily routine. In order to perceive this harmony of light and shadow, the pattern, we need to be mature and have courage to trust the alternation of light and shadows. Such wisdom is present in the artwork of these two artists.
In both artists’ practice, appreciation of everything natural and involvement of chaos and chance holds a significant place. Maidla’s graphic pieces depict the chaotic beauty of nature, the debris piled up on the shore, and the silent decay of buildings. Truus has worked with burnt, deteriorated and crooked wood while assigning a defining role to imperfection in her pieces. Natural disorder has been encoded into the artwork of both artists.
And yet, there is a certain contrast – letting things settle along with the long-term profound development and refinement of one’s message. On one hand, life and the world form similar kind of bundle, or a maze; yet on the other hand, the value and meaning of life are determined by how we endure, perceive and define the light and the dark aspects of this world.
Ove Maidla is a freelance artist and photographer whose artistic practice applies the means of both photography and graphic art. He is interested in old fine art photography techniques such as bromoil process and photogravure which create a painterly and non-photographic image based on a photo. In recent years, Maidla has primarily worked in linocut technique, known for its extreme laboriousness and detail. The recurring themes in his pieces are landscapes, either untouched by humans or creating the feeling that human beings have left the space forever. Maidla believes that nature is always honest and everything is always correct there. The artist finds beauty in degrading wooden houses, the twigs gathered by spring floods and the impenetrable brushwood.
Ove Maidla has held around twenty solo exhibitions. He has received awards both as a photo artist and a press photographer. In 2020, he was awarded the Graphic Artist of the Year award by the Association of Estonian Printmakers. Together with Enrico Talvistu, Maidla has co-authored several photography albums documenting the urban space of Tartu. A selection of Maidla’s photographs in bromoil technique has been published in the author’s collection “Bromoil prints”.
Silja Truus has studied phychology at the University of Tartu as well as visual art, sculpture and media in London, UK. She has participated in around ten exhibitions in the United Kingdom. Since 2018, the artist has been living in Estonia again, her first solo exhibition in Estonia took place in Viinistu in 2019 and the second one in Tartu, in 2020.
In her artistic practice, Truus addresses hidden and profoundly emotional reactions to the most fundamental experiences of being human. Through exhaustive research and introspection, the artist attempts to give a simple, iconic and instinctively understandable form to the concepts she is working with. In recent years, the themes in Truus’s artwork have often been related to deep ecology and liberation from the anthropocentric worldviews.
Truus’ artistic practice can be characterized by working in various media and with different materials, including stone, steel, clay, bronze and found materials. The artist adheres to the principle that the nature of the material along with the related emotions and meanings always transcend into the completed work and form a significant part of its meaning. Silja Truus is a member of the Estonian Sculptors’ Union, Tartu Artists’ Union and Chelsea Arts Club.
Vabaduse gallery is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.
Additional information:
Estonian Artists’ Association
ekl@eaa.ee