Krista Mölder “You were a bird”

“When the dream of flying is better than flying.”

Krista Mölder’s work so far has been marked by an attempt to depict potential, and to depict it exactly as potential, by using various approaches to avoid showing clearly defined objects and meanings, that is, things on the foreground, things that the photographs are about (or even what they talk about). Art Allmägi has described this as follows: “She often stages her photographs in a way that does not present much information, yet compels the viewer to imagine the parts that are left out.” Thus, the backgrounds of Mölder’s photos conspire with what is out of frame, triggering the viewers’ imagination. The viewers feel the presence of out-of-frame, yet do not see it. To resolve the tension, they begin filling this blank in the surround with their own feeling-matter. Mölder’s photographs are composed in a way that keeps the feeling-matter from getting dark. She lures out bright matter, without it becoming noisy or naive.

In the current show, Mölder has supplemented her previous approach with flirt with clearly defined objects: besides backgrounds we also see gliders. Gliding presents us with a tension-laden encounter of extreme vulnerability and control. Of vulnerability, as one is inevitably forced to surrender to the currents of air while hanging above the landscape. Of control, when one nevertheless masters it and surveys the landscape from above. Such a high tension, however, is barely present in the show. It has been softened into a low-tensioned wait, of a nurturing pause under covers, of a calm readiness of slumbering gliders. This state is perhaps not unfamiliar to the viewer and they, too, are overcome by a longing for a nurturing pause and calm readiness. With her exhibition, Mölder thus presents us with another layer in her ongoing project of luring out nurturing bright matter.

Text by Eik Hermann

The exhibition is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Punch drinks