Breadcrumb
“Places Belong to No One. Vol. 2“ by Rauno Thomas Moss
10 July – 9 August 2025
On Thursday, 10 July at 5 p.m., the solo exhibition “Places Belong to No One. Vol. 2” by Rauno Thomas Moss will open at Gallery Pallas. The artist presents his recent work in large-format abstract compositions. The exhibition is the second instalment of a series, the first of which was displayed in 2024 at the Office of the Chancellor of Justice. Much of that earlier body of work is now being exhibited in Tartu.
The exhibition draws inspiration from years of teaching colour theory and practice to art students, as well as from emotional impressions gathered during the artist’s travels. Moss explores the expressive qualities of colour, simultaneous contrasts, harmonies, and the lyricism that emerges from them. His compositions are constructed from planes of colour, with attention to their size and distribution across the pictorial surface.
Rauno Thomas Moss deliberately incorporates elements from orphism, suprematism, futurism, geometric abstraction, constructivism, and the Bauhaus. Although some of these movements are ideologically opposed, they are here brought into harmonious dialogue. As a semiotician, the artist draws upon the language and symbolism of colour, the meanings of shapes and forms, and also engages in syntactic deconstruction and playful manipulation. His guiding principle is an all-encompassing intuition.
The exhibition also features black-and-white paintings that serve, conceptually, as anti-paintings—texts without syntax—through which the artist, as a painter-semiotician, articulates his own critical positions.
Rauno Thomas Moss (1977) is a painter and graphic designer based in Tartu, Estonia, as well as a semiotician and lecturer at Pallas University of Applied Sciences. He began his studies in sculpture at Tartu Art School in 1993, later shifting to artistic design and painting, graduating in 1998. He continued his education at the University of Tartu’s Faculty of Philosophy, studying in the Department of Fine Arts under Professor Jaan Elken, and specialising in semiotics and cultural studies under Professors Peeter Torop and Mihhail Lotman. Moss has lectured on drawing, plastic anatomy, and composition at the University of Tartu’s Institute of Cultural Research and Arts. Since 2008, Rauno Thomas Moss has been a member of the Estonian Artists’ Association.
Press photo: Rauno Thomas Moss. New-York I. 2024. Acrylic on canvas. 120x160 cm.
More information:
Rauno Thomas Moss
rauno.moss@pallasart.ee
+372 5229737
Gallery Pallas
galerii@pallasart.ee
+372 7349954
Tue–Sat 11–18
Riia 11, Tartu
