I Don’t Know You That Well

“When I received the letter, I got on the train, without knowing why.”

“I don’t know why I took this journey.”

Crammed corridors filled with discarded items stretch like narrow lanes, squeezing together suppressed empathy, sexuality and boredom, where people stand with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Is this a type of purgatory? Motives remain hidden and obscure: who are these two people? Where are they going? Where have they been? There is talk, speculation and gossip swarming around, as we observe them with excitement and dismay, to unfold some details of what has just occurred.

Johannes Luik and Krišjānis Elviks have engaged in a similarly layered exchange, coming together artistically to create the site-specifically installed work series I Don’t Know You That Well. They have described it as a “process-based conversation in material,” while at the same time creating a dialogue with the exhibition space and other works.

Material is mostly manufactured for a defined function, a purpose in the built environment. What happens with materials which have been used already before or have been left over: should we return them to their box? Or are they free of it and from their expected purpose have found a new one? What conversation can create material itself – ceramic tiles meeting ripped recycled denim, plasterboard covered in strips of PVC fabric, wood next to ropes and paint? Spread throughout the gallery, fixated in a moment of touching, these materials, not so unfamiliar to each other, unsettled from their productive functions, lead us from one place to another creating a playful and revealing storyline.