Time

Roland Barthes has written about the contradiction of time stored in photographs: we always see in them both what is now and what has been. A photograph stops time, but it always changes over time. On the one hand, it physically fades and becomes worn, on the other hand, the events that occur after taking the photograph will change the way we look at it. Something in this line of thought resonates with the works by Krista Mölder. In her work, time seems to have slowed down to the extreme. This slowness is sometimes accentuated by the repetition of themes and motifs through several exhibitions. According to the artist, this recurrence signifies an acute presence, the inevitability of everyday life in its best sense. Things always go in circles, each ending is followed by a new beginning.

Kristi Kongi repeatedly looks back at the same memories in this exhibition. Works created on the basis of her diary entries have been completed at different times, so they are quite different from each other. It is only natural that the more time passes, the more our memories will change. We overwrite them with each recall, increasing and decreasing the role of different aspects of the past. Besides speaking about an occurrence in Kongi’s past, each work also speaks about the way she has recalled this memory at the time of creating the work. There is generally something admirable in the painter’s relationship to time. Of course, the work of a photographer is not only limited to exposing a film either, but a painter sometimes literally has to wait for the paint to dry before they can continue working.