SUMMARY

Curator Anthea Buys brings together works by the Norwegian artist Magnhild Øen Nordahl and the Estonian artist Paul Kuimet in the exhibition “Exploded View” at Kai Art Center. It is difficult to say whether this pairing constitutes a joint statement or a dialogue. If one sets aside the obvious differences between photography, 16 mm film and 3D-printed sculpture, the themes the two artists address are almost identical. The exhibition considers the pervasive influence of technology, science, engineering and social structures on artistic production and on our everyday modes of perception.

Visually, however, their approaches diverge: Kuimet’s restrained, cool photographic and filmic language versus Nordahl’s brightly coloured, at times almost childlike, irregular sculptural forms. What unites them is an ambivalent relationship with technology. More precisely, both examine how new tools of production and representation – initially perceived as revolutionary or even threatening – become normalised through use and social self-regulation. Shocking artistic innovations and miraculous tools become routine. There is no alternative, nothing ever seems to change, and yet everything changes irreversibly. Using a camera, film, a 3D printer or a CNC machine differs less from writing a prompt than one might think. 

Kuimet’s stance on technology and art is, as expected, marked by pessimism. In his hands, the medium treated as an object becomes like sand, inevitably slipping through the fingers and becoming part of the accumulated layers of culture. His gaze is directed towards finitude. In this exhibition too, one senses an interweaving of the rise and fall of technology with a spiralling social decline in his practice.

Perhaps surprisingly, Nordahl’s relationship to technology, by contrast, is constructively optimistic. While she recognises the flaws and risks technology brings, her attention turns to the possibilities new tools afford the artist. There is scope for further development, for refining existing techniques and production models. There is room for something new. There is the potential to demonstrate continuity and growth in knowledge. From this perspective, the relationship between technology and society remains open to progress.In this way, the two poles of the exhibition complement one another and suggest that there are multiple ways of becoming – and remaining – human. The question gains urgency when one asks which school of the so-called art of living one belongs to, and what choices one makes when confronted with the structures and contingencies of the world.