The Head is Not the Tail

https://kultuur.postimees.ee/6716478/kui-pea-ei-ole-saba

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Per William Petersen’s exhibition „Head and Tail“ is open at Haus Gallery until 26 June 2019.

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The Danish-Estonian artist Per William Petersen (1955) gave his first exhibition, “Golden Moments”, in Vanemuine theatre in the same year that he moved to his new home land. He has been singing his own tune in Estonia all these years as a very fertile freelance creator and an active exhibition author. He is a member of both the Tartu Artists’ Union and the Estonian Artists’ Association, also the Estonian Sculptors’ Union. He is the only known Danish artist in Estonia, whereas the number of Estonian artists in Denmark is somewhat larger (Külli Suitso, Silja Salmistu-Støvring, and others).

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Petersen’s this year’s exhibitions, „Humor Is Serious Talk“ and „Truth Is Acidic“, displayed in the library of the University of Tartu within the Prima Vista 2019 festival had not yet finished when the author already launched a new exhibition with a brand new set of works at Haus Gallery in Tallinn. Petersen’s versatile creative history includes short films and videos, whether about his creative process, the river Emajõgi – a meaningful link to Denmark, several „accidental“ documentary clips, but this time Haus Gallery initiated a portrait film about the artist himself. The author, Nando Grancell, is planning to show it next year at the Danish Nyheder documentaries festival (https://cphdox.dk). The artist, having lived in Estonia for 13 years, keeps contact with Denmark also through the embassy, thus it was natural for the Danish Ambassador Kristina Miskowiak Beckvard to also attend the opening at Haus Gallery.

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Petersen’s life and artistic credo almost sounds like oriental wisdom: „Make your own life, come as close to your life as possible, create the kind of life you want, work for it, be ready to change your life, even drastically. You are born to be someone and it is impossible to escape it; it will happen to you, so make the best of it.“

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The title of the exhibition, „Head and Tail“ (Hoved og hale in Danish), refers to the Danish saying used when necessary to make sense of confusing matters or to understand where the head and the tail of the matter is. Petersen’s titles always tend to be polysemic and involve word play.  In an attempt to identify the head and tail of the Haus exhibition one might think that the tail would be the water-exuding revolver-shaped sculpture „When ALL is DAD and GUN“. The artist turns the apocalyptic saying „when all is dead and gone“ into an ironic retort against ever-growing aggression in the world. The similar-sounding title „When All is Dad and Gone“ is absurd per se, although the threat of a dominating father figure is definitely perceivable. At the exhibition it creates a necessary artistic tension with the joie de vivre radiating from the rest of the works.

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Even in the medium of Per William Petersen’s works it is not always easy to locate heads and tails. If in 2006 Per claimed that painting is his life and that to paint means to tell stories, he went on to reveal various reasons to why his paintings evolved into sculptures. One rationale was to step out of the shadow of his painter father. On the other hand he at one point began to see sculptures in his paintings. At the same time we can say that the paintings have remained as well, but can now be seen in three dimensions simultaneously. So the viewer has the opportunity to still see paintings – in his sculptures. In his own words: „These 3D objects are simply paintings that have jumped off the canvas“ (2012). In 2019 he already draws a line between „UPjects“ that can be hanged on the wall, and sculptures.

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Characters wanting to emerge from paintings and become objects can also be perceived or even materialised in the works of other artists, but the sculptor-painter (or object artist – painter) symbiosis is a rather rare mix in art history. The means of expression of these two media are probably different and contrary enough to make the outcome either this or that. The objects and paintscapes of Kaarel Kurismaa are a good example of the thorough detachment of these two media.

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I wouldn’t compare Petersen’s handwriting to the history of constructivism or to the complicated outlets of this trend in modern times, or with the so-called Swiss art standard. I wouldn’t compare his revolver piece with, e.g., Claes Oldenburg’s fire arms collection, where whatever elements (a tap, a painting glove, iron tool fragments, all kinds of plastic and wooden bits, even shadows on the wall or puddles on the ground) remind the shape of a revolver, i.e. a collection that presents – in the footprints of Andy Warhol – the image of the gun as a truly American icon.

 

Per’s previously foreign-looking, sincerely and openly designer-like form conception is increasingly losing its special position and merging with the trend that seems to be historically reserved for Tartu – an applied designer form – because other art forms in Tartu have gradually closed on themselves or been made to close.

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By way of counterbalance, Per’s wife Sirje Protsin-Petersen’s role as one of the very few contemporary painters in Tartu – is to maintain the expressionist note.  For the unhurried pace and safe environment of Tartu, expression as such has, truth be told, always seemed alien. It is true that even the Pallas school was rather a servant to hedonism. World-pain does not seem to reach the university town on an emotional level. Only through the plane of the sober mind and from a safe distance. Per solves this deep-rooted, slightly ethical dissonance in his own way: “If you mix humour with truth, it becomes a very powerful tool.” 

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Kaire Nurk

Art historian/artist