A Never-ending Stone by Laure Catugier
Opening event
Friday, September 22, 6pm — 9pm
Opening hours
September 23 — September 30, 2023
Thu, Fri, 4pm — 7pm
Sat, 3pm — 7pm
& by appointment
The inventor of concrete, François Coignet, called concrete a never-ending stone and symbolized the omnipresence of this building material in the architecture of the 20th century. Flexible, cheap and robust, it stands for the dawn of new times, for modernity and has already acquired its own historicity in recent decades. The architecture of Estonia, formerly occupied by the Soviet Union, became a melting pot of political and ideological claims and continues to shape urban structures to this day. As part of her residency, Laure Catugier went on a search for traces of these built contemporary witnesses in Estonia, documenting their appearance and essence in sensitive photographic images. In the next step of her artistic exploration, she rearranged them using a collage technique to reveal hidden perspectives, unknown shapes and lines.
The characteristic exposed concrete of the exhibition space corresponds with the aesthetics of the photographs. Inspired by her residency host, the TYPA Paper and Printing Museum in Tartu, Catugier came into contact with another dimension of the aesthetic language of the Soviet era. Under the motto “books must be cheaper than sweets”, the Soviets, who occupied Estonia, propagated access to reading for all. Even if the ideological content of these books is justifiably disputed today and must be viewed highly critically, the design level, especially of the book covers, reflects the richness of illustrative style of the time. Produced in large editions, graphic designers pushed the ideological limits of artistic freedom, experimenting with form, colour and content. Today, these illustrations are representative of the complexity of Estonian and thus Eastern European post-Soviet history.
This show reflects on Laure Catugiers Residency in Tartu organised by roam projects e. V. and MTÜ Eesti-Saksa Kunstikoostöö in cooperation with TYPA Printing and Paper Arts Centre.
Funded by
