Anders Härm, curatorial statement for the exhibition „Viewfinder“ at Tallinn Art Hall Gallery 22.12.2011 - 08.01.2012:

Viewfinders is the second solo exhibition of Paul Kuimet, the young Estonian artist who was recently awarded the Eduard Wiiralt grant which will be ceremonially handed over at the opening. At the event Kuimet also presents his freshly published book In Vicinity which includes works from the artist’s previous solo exhibition at Hobusepea Gallery that attracted much attention. The book published by Lugemik was designed by Indrek Sirkel and features an essay by Mari Laanemets.

In many respects, Viewfinders further intensifies the processes in Kuimet’s work that already started with In Vicinity. According to the artist himself, he “continues to work with the urban environment and the issues related to the formation of its identity”. All three works displayed at the exhibition study specific environments from a certain alienated perspective or alternatively, amplify the inner contradictions and sense of alienation of these environments.

The central work of the exhibition, Kairo Street, is a photographic installation of light-boxes, depicting eight adjacent houses on a street named Kairo in the district of Toukola, Helsinki. While In Vicinity presented houses in new dwelling districts in the outskirts of Tallinn, the photos in Kairo Street are taken from a certain conceptualised perspective along the street front that shows a more settled identity. Viewfinder is a video installation that uses Super 8 film, which adds a poetic mood to the work supplemented by Raymond Carver's short story of the same name as a voiceover. The third work displayed is a stereoscopic landscape photo Kohatu 59° 9' – 24° 30' which, despite its name, depicts an actual physical place called Kohatu.*

Kuimet’s exhibition takes the viewer straight in the middle of the contradictions of objects, landscapes and geographical names. There are objects that do not belong to the environment, and environments with their names associated to completely different states of mind. There is an arbitrary combination of text and picture and eventually, a place that is actually ‘out of place’. In a way, depicting things that are impossible to depict, Kuimet also explores the boundaries of photography as a medium as well as the difficult-to-define borders between the possibilities and impossibilities within that medium itself.

*‘Kohatu’ as an adjective could be translated as ‘placeless’ and/or ‘out of place’.