Meander

2020

Chrome-plated steel, mineral concretion stones

Photos by Camilla Maria Santini (SpazioA) and Paul Kuimet (Exhibition views at Tallinn Art Hall)

In Meander, Inescu creates a sculptural installation that combines geology with the human body. The permanence of landscape is only perceived as such by our relative experience of time, but the weathering of a rock and the carving of a river is evidence of planetary matter in constant flux. Rather than the body being present within the landscape, the structure of the natural curves and flows of liquids is considered a body of a much larger scale.

Estonia is dotted with lakes that populate Subbi’s canvases; these natural features define the region but were made from a complex series of geological events. This work is a representation of compressed time through the eyes of a geologist in which layers of rock create an open archive. Within these chronicles lie the remnants of our ancient ancestors and the landscapes we inhabit today.

Rivers are a historical and present source of life and economy to society. With water comes silt, rocks, plastics and animal parts that partake in the river’s voyage. The stones that lie within the structure come from the riverbanks of Romania where Inescu spent time studying a particular type of concretion stone. They populate the sculpture like a chain of mineral elements. If Subbi’s landscapes are incomplete without the human body, Inescu’s installation posits the earth itself as a body, by likening rivers to the life-blood of the earth: a capillary system of water and nutrients. The human body, in turn, becomes a landscape.

Text by Angels Miralda for the group exhibition Olev Subbi: Landscape From the End of Times at Tallinn Art Hall, 2020