“Always the Present“ by Ly Lestberg

August 26 – October 1, 2023
Gallery Metropol
Vana-Kalamaja 46, Tallinn

Opening event on Saturday, August 26 at 6 pm.

/War and peace are two different worlds. They are so different that it is difficult for a person who lives in one of them to imagine another. It rarely happens in history that you are given to stand on the border of two such worlds and even for a moment feel the nature of both of them./

From the story based on Aira Kaalu's wartme notes “Liberaton” (published in 1961 in the almanach "Siin Tartu...")

Ly Lestberg reveals the background of the site-specific exhibition:
“Since I was a child, I have been fascinated by all kinds of dictionaries, because it is there that there is an infinite number of word explanations and comments, behind which an infinite number of paradoxes are hidden. What then lies between the pair of opposite words (war : peace) and the place where the airy border runs through time (story) from which the essence of both words can be felt at the same time? Gallery Metropol’s tiny exhibition space and a floor-to-ceiling filing cabinet with 160 drawers offer a very solid but spacious frame for dealing with such questions - as in any proper archive. The drawers can hold quite a large number of different pairs of opposite words, poetry and random phrases at the same time, so that the texts create a whole, where the solutions to the questions are constantly changing. The angle and side from which the word fragments that are currently next to each other are read will be decisive.

A gallery the size of an incubator encourages you to supplement this experiment of time limits with a little original photos, which are assembled on the computer screen from several files placed in different places. All this is in order to understand a little more the unforeseen jumps in time and the crossing of borders. Because knowing that there is always the present puts our lives on a game board where everything is connected to everything.”

* title of the exhibition “Always the Present” is also the title of the poetry collection by Octavio Paz (1984) published in the Loomingu Raamatukogu series.

Ly Lestberg (b.1965) is a freelance artist. She graduated from the Tallinn University of Art in 1990, majoring in graphics, and has gained recognition as a photo artist. In her work, she always deeply searched for connections between man, life and being in relation with time, places and space in a wider sense. There have been a total of more than thirty important personal exhibitions. The artist is primarily interested in creating as many different spatial units as possible, where the image, text, sound and previously existing environment would have their place.

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Cultural Foundation.

To visit the exhibitions after the opening, ring the doorbell or, even better, arrange your visit beforehand by calling +372 5217649 or +372 53750662 or send a message via social media.

Additional information
Ly Lestberg
Tel: +372 5645 0765
E-mail: ly.lestberg@gmail.com

Kaarel Kütas
Tel: +372 521 7649
E-mail: kaarel.kytas@gmail.com

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