Marko Mäetamm's painted photo-exhibition in Estonian Embassy

06.03.2008

Marko Mäetamm, FAMILY PHOTOS (painted verisons). 2008.

In Estonian Embassy in Helsinki (Itäinen puistotie 10) 6.03-30.04.2008

Marko Mäetamm (b 1965) has worked as an artist for the past fifteen years. He started as a graphic artist, but today his vast artistic range also includes painting, performance art, video, photography, multi-media, and three-dimensional objects. Mäetamm has a distinctive relationship to the world around him as an analytical bystander, which he expresses in his work as visual stories in which visual images and text support each other, much like in comics, to create an almost diagram-like composition. And, like in comics, Mäetamm prefers to use the grotesque to impart his impure absurdist visuals.

Mäetamm has always been a loner who follows his own path, which has not prevented him from finding great public recognition. In the last few years he has had many important solo exhibitions internationally and has participated in international projects. He has officially respresented Estonia twice in the Venice Biennial, once in 2003 and again in 2007. The first time, he presented a series of large-scale paintings along with Kaido Oleg under the pseudonym John Smith, and the second time he presented the installation “I love My Family”. In 2003, Mäetamm was chosen to be Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts in the Estonian Academy of Art.

The artist has said that in the series “Famili Photos”, he deals with “the same problems I’ve focused on in many works recently, namely, learning to sense or map out the space between oneself and one’s family. The space between the family and the collective body might be revealed to the viewer as a general scheme, or questions might arise as to what role the family plays today as a model in society, how society relates to the family and vice versa, how they reciprocally manipulate one another and what are the possible consequences.”