Katrin Pere. Cloud cities
Katrin Pere’s tapestry exhibition, Cloud Cities, will open on 21 June at 6 pm. In her confidently generalizing, tactile imagery, Katrin Pere is more of an visual artist than a tapestry artist. The materials in her work, the surfaces, composition and colours invite us to look at her works as paintings that demand to be seen with our own eyes, not as reproductions. For older generation painters, it was the intensity of light that enlivened colour compositions, in the case of Katrin Pere it’s the textures of the materials sown together that make the surfaces move – the touch of the maker on the tapestry leaving the same impression as the brushwork on a painting.
The exhibition is open from 22 June to 23 July.
Katrin Pere graduated from the State Art Institute in 1977 (cum laude) and was immediately invited to teach painting and drawing at the same academy. Pere considers colleagues from different fields as her mentors – from design, jewellery, theatre, painting, tapestry and graphic art. Her talent and scope has crossed the borders of different fields of art since the very beginning. After her graduation work, which was a gobelin tapestry, she focused on creating textile murals using a range of materials and techniques.
In 2003, Tiina Käesel wrote in Sirp about Pere’s solo exhibition Who Cares at the Art Hall Gallery: “She has a very strong academic foundation, she is an excellent painter and drawer, also skilled in applying spatial works; possesses classic textile techniques, but prefers techniques (darning, appliqué, upholstery, drapery, printed textile, etc.) that take little time to realize, are fresh and immediate.” Anders Härm noted on the same exhibition: “Pere doesn’t sketch, doesn’t care about technique or the status quo of the applied arts, and is constantly unfaithful to materials.” This compliment, constructed through negations, involves both recognition and truth. On viewing the work Wing of Sorrow, made using feathers, and the tapestry One versus, consisting of tens of thousands of pins, the first one exhibited in the permanent collection of the Museum of Applied Art and Design, we get an idea of the scale of the creative works of the artist Katrin Pere, carried by a stubbornness of sentiment and conviction. The artist’s passionate frankness justifies the constant shifting of borders in a seemingly modest, domestic and decorative field that she powerfully possesses and addresses. Sometimes discussing and arguing, other times dreaming or watching clouds.
“I remember my mother washing the windows and hanging old patched sheets on the windows as substitute curtains. The light that came through their texture into the room was uneven, misty and beautiful. In my needlework I still chase that feeling to this day” – Katrin Pere.