Dark Matter
Tartu Art House 19.09.–13.10.2019
my place is on the border and all my shelters
are only temporary 1

The future is like an intangible blurry shape that lacks any edges. Despite this, we are
here and are seeing the signs of a man-made world: endless ignorant and dark
landscapes. How should we look at this present, this temporary and fragile world?
Should we let the dark current submerge us and hope that the water will carry us
along?

„Dark Matter” is a notional continuation of “Beyond Reality” that took place in the
Tartu Art House two years ago. That project approached today’s restless minds through
contemporary printmaking. The present exhibition is also somewhat fantastic but
focuses more on the environment, the urban space and the utopian present. The concept
of dark matter originates with the astronomer Ernst Öpik who tried to capture an
unknown substance that was only “visible” in space through changes in gravity. This
project looks at the dark powers that interfere in our everyday lives and expose
themselves only through their crude consequences. It’s an over-accelerated world that
weaves between the absurd and the fantastical and, as often as not, it seems that the
“flat Earth” is just the peak of the iceberg.

Öpik has said: „Material objects are born, disappear and are born again. This is the
rhythm of the physical world. Everything that can be measured and weighed and
whose time can be determined is subject to this rhythm. Despite this, there is
something inside us that has no measure, weight or time: it is our consciousness, the
‘me’ that is different for every person but is still similar to other ‘mes’. Isn’t this a
piece or an atom of the Great Consciousness of Space? The preliminary reality of our
consciousness, the only existence that we don’t doubt, our only gateway and window
through which we perceive the world….”

Everything substantial is transient and immobility is only an illusion. We must capture

1 Maarja Pärtna, Vivaarium. Tartu: Elusamus, 2019, p 28.

our own presence in this oversaturated world with its endless flood of information and
not lose our passionate yet tranquil sensibility.