You can learn a lot from a glance – the directing of the eyes towards the distance, the rolling of the eyes, blinking or squinting combined with body language may say more about a person than they would perhaps like to reveal. Even dogs that have misbehaved know this, either looking away or covering their eyes with their paws, although their reason for doing so is somewhat more naive – their hope is to make themselves invisible. At Indrek Aava’s exhibition, eyes are not shifted or covered with paws, but are instead covered by geometric and three dimensional surfaces. In addition, concealing and hiding when necessary, as the headless bodies, eyeless heads and closed eyes also represent the social and internal alienation of the author. People are increasingly finding themselves more distant from each other, because of their immersion in smart devices as well as wandering in their own personal wastelands.

In the same way that conspiracy theorists point to hidden symbolism – which not everyone is able to see – in Stanley Kubric’s last film Eyes Wide Shut, the details found within Aava’s works can be put together to reveal altogether different personal associations.  The form of the exhibition is direct and easily digestible; the author’s ambitions are pretentious and genuine, which also explains the popularity of his previous exhibition, A Different Kind of Reality, among visitors. ‘This time, I will be using even more colours and frames, some of which are genuinely bourgeois baroque in their style’, said the author, describing how intentionally over-tightened screws may amplify the contents and perhaps even open one’s eyes.

Indrek Aava (1977) became involved in the art of painting in 2005, at Järvenpää Art School, in Finland, where he was studying to become a graphic advertising artist. He has participated in exhibitions since 2009, and his works can be found in private collections in Estonia as well as elsewhere in the world – Finland, France, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, China, Russia and Italy.