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REPRESENTED ARTISTS   BERTILLE BAK GWENAEL BELANGER DEXTER DYMOKE ANTTI LAITINEN
    MARKO MAETAMM YUDI NOOR OLIVER PIETSCH KIM RUGG
    BETTINA SAMSON SINTA WERNER    

MARKO MAETAMM

Walking in My Hunting Ground

24 FEBRUARY - 1 APRIL 2012



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Marko Mäetamm's multidisciplinary practice explores a world where the artist's confessions and impassioned outcries come to life in the form of boundless metafictions. Since his early days as an artist, Mäetamm's practice has been nurtured by the magic of human chemistry, by visual sign systems relating to a certain social topography as well as by certain mechanisms which operate between the self and the artistic creation.

While deepening an interest in the concerns of daily life, Mäetamm's practice naturally developed from the intricacies surrounding to the family unit, a theme which represents today his main playground. The storytelling element is the medium through which he explores the grey areas between our uncontrollable feelings and the way in which we are expected to repress such emotions.
He is interested in those everyday instances, which are on the one hand ideal but on the other are tarnished by the idea that a blink of an eye can separate us from nightmares and disasters. These repressed feelings and fantasies are universally present and yet, Mäetamm's way of confronting them, is to address them with humour. In this way each project becomes the interpretation of a version of a daily situation where he unavoidably edges towards scenes where multiple cases of "what if's" are enacted.

For his second solo show at the gallery, Marko Mäetamm presents three new animations, an ensemble of drawings as well as a series of objects and sculptures, a body of work inspired by a return to childhood role plays and the reenactment of themes such as hunting and chasing. On this occasion, the artist invites us on a tour of his territory where certain clues resulting from a human chase mercilessly accumulate. Here and there, miniature blue watercolor scenes, introducing a hunted family, reiterate their drama.

Between feelings of ultimate power and childish instinct, the act of hunting - a real symbol of masculinity - recalls the stature of authority and domination, but here, a sense of order seems to have been slightly disturbed - this sense of disquiet is evoked by the presence of a disconcerting hunting trophy of the owner's memorabilia for example. We also revisit tales such as the Little Red Riding Hood or other fantastical creatures such as poisonous plants living deep within the woods.

 

Marko Maetamm was born in in 1965 in Viljandi, Estonia. He lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia and represented the Estonian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Recent exhibitions include ESTONIE TONIQUE, Liberte Vabadus 2011, Chateau d'Asnieres, France (2011) ; La Main Numérique, curated by Dominique Païni, Maison d'Art Bernard Anthonioz, Nogent sur Marne, France and National Museum of Fine Arts Taiwan (2010); Rencontres internationales (Paris, Berlin, Madrid), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010) ; XIII. Brooklyn International Film Festival, New York (2010); Post Flux (in partnership with Centre Pompidou Paris and Festival Pocket Films), Brussels Bozar, Brussels, Belgium (2009).

 

 

With the kind support from

 

 

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