Maarit Murka exhibition "Escape room nr 1", Vaal gallery, Tallinn, 2019
The incredibly fast pace of urbanisation has caused the living nature to retreat. Landscapes, which should compensate and substitute for living nature, are instead its tragi-comical shadows. As humans intervene, elementary components become absurd. Just like prison, war and murder games have become entertainment, artists offer encounters with ‘sensation space’ in artificial natural environments. By focusing on space and the environment, the artist changes the exhibition area into a game of senses and perceptions.
The balcony level of the gallery presents a multidimensional painting installation. From one angle, ‘corner paintings’ concentrate the transitions of the tones of colour of the abstract artificial nature as a visual expression. From another angle, an integral image of nature depicting reality is created.
On the first floor, the artist looks at herself in the mirror and plays a parade of Christmas trees taken from the forests over the years. The barren trees that have shed their needles and the pair of rubber boots stuck to the floor of the gallery are all indications of our habitual and customary activities which nonetheless destroy our planet.