Exhibition > Past > Haus Gallery

Haus Gallery 07.05.2009-12.06.2009

Paintings

An artist’s background is formed by the facts that we usually line up to confirm his or her professionalism: when was the person born, where he or she has studied or for what reason is he or she engaged in art. At this point we should probably state: Sven Saag (born in 1968) has studied painting at Tartu University, taken part in exhibitions since 1994. He is a member of the Estonian Artists’ Association and the Estonian Painters’ Association. At the same time these details are actually of not much importance for the viewer in the gallery.
In the gallery the wholeness of the artist’s idea and its realisation, the expressive association of material and intangible is what counts. What counts is the ability to express oneself visually so that the viewer does not remain indifferent but rather so that new associations are evoked. An exhibition is a success if it touches one’s soul – even if for a moment. The greatest skill of an artist is not to leave the viewer unmoved.

All that is present at Sven Saag’s exhibition. A thought spoken out loud and the wholeness of its realisation, to which even the mysterious shades of red that radiate from the paintings whisper along, fulfilling the whole room and changing it into something totally different this time. The images on the walls have been reflected through the artist’s obscure subconscious mind as indications of a memory, an event or a picture of thought, about which we sort of cannot say any more whether it ever was real or not.
To the viewer those paintings sound as the echo of footsteps in a lush unfamiliar garden where there is hidden gate through which pass the silent shadows behind the walker as thoughts that do not want to be watched to the end even if one peeps coyly from behind the long bangs of hair.

The artist himself has said about his paintings:
„Like a restorer who removes layers of paint and discovers new and old figures, faces or views underneath – that is how we can “scrape open” our memories – find forgotten motifs, figures, situations. That is also how my paintings have revealed themselves, by removing the layers of paint, like a sculpture that emerges from a block of stone under the sculptor’s hands. In this way one can find oneself in very different layers. First the childhood – the garden view from my Grandma’s veranda is one of my first memories. Some plum and apple-trees, a myriad of gooseberry bushes – I know exactly the taste of them all. Now, while smoking the water-pipe on the veranda in summer, that view has become an icon for me. Digging further one can go deeper – some of the things may be familiar from dreams. From time to time some women visit my canvases, some transiently, some stay there longer. I try to put them into my painting…

The current exhibition is not a project for which I have produced an exact amount of paintings. It is rather the current status of the situation in my studio; painting is a continuous process. From time to time it is just nice to give the pictures some rest and treat them to a month’s trip to a gallery.“

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