Pain and passion, world and creation, artist and art ...

Virge Jõekalda came into the graphical art of Estonia at the  end of the 1980ies - beginning of the 1990ies, when she graduated from the ESAI. During the exhibiting activity, which has lasted for one and a half decades, the creation of Jõekalda has undergone several changes, but has maintain its basic texture. Of course we can remember the beginning of the 90ies, when she was regarded to be the follower of the tradition of the Estonian balck and white copperplate printing and to compare it with the hurtingly red sheets that are being exposed at the Haus Gallery. But all of it comes later. First there was concentration, a breath, a clean printing plate, sensation, feeling, again a printing plate, again a sensation, discreet shuffle.

 

Works of Jõekalda make an incision into the world system and somewhere else, but instead of a scalpel the artist holds in her hand a dry needle. Lines that the artist draws on the plate become cracks Somewhere Else and amazingly beautiful blood starts to trickle from the wounds. This is pain and magic at the same time, a decadent deeply earnest game with the world and oneself. With oneself!

 

The author\'s position of  Jõekalda is neither that of  the doctor nor of the sufferer. Her works do not try to cure (and how to cure the incurable?), prescribe pills or vitamins, stick plasters to the not coagulating wounds, give diagnoses and show the patients out with a deceiving-optimistic smile. Jõekalda does not suffer, her graphic sheets do not crumple in agony or torture. There is pain, but the pain is good, delicious, enchanting. Because without the pain Jõekalda can not exist anymore. She is too healthy for that.

 

No, in this case the artist is certainly not a Doctor or a Sufferer, is she rather a saint? Someone, who takes the pain on herself, because somebody has to do it. Who does not intervene anywhere else but herself, intervening so actually everywhere. It is Jõekalda herself in these pictures, I certainly believe. Her wounds, her dry needle fields, her colour and pain, tenderness and silence. No screams, not even whispers - words have run themselves breathless, but the world still has not been covered yet. The world is still standing without being described or understood, even though words next to it stand and pant. They have run out of strength. Something else is needed here.

 

The \"permanent texture\" of the Jõekalda creation is also clearly visible and also well concealed at the present exhibition. The artist herself has emphasized the importance of the process in her ceation and the fact that the achieved result is not for her always so enchanting as the happenings in between, a few kilometres ago. Jõekalda returns again and again, the \"enchantment\" does not give her peace, one sheet can not say it all. This exhibition must remain together, as the whole world must remain together. Removing even of one sheet causes a blank in the exhibition, an incurable wound. A plaster can not help then anymore.