Riin Kaljurand

she manipulates my work at different drying stages by scraping, folding, cutting, drawing into and building up. Some of her paintings are built up by collaborating collage techniques and traditional handcraft, such as basket weaving, knitting and crocheting. She chooses her references quickly, working from a gut instinct; then she converts the selected image into what she loosely describes as a ‘painting’. These ‘paintings’ blur the boundaries between painting and skin. In these works, she seeks to create a tension between the logic of ‘should’ and the logic of ‘play’. Creativity is in any case a game. It’s a leap in a certain way, Riin introduces several obstacles. If she makes sure to leap in a certain way, she can arrive at something good. Riin tries to use paint, not as it ‘should’ be used – a medium to be applied to a surface using specific tools – but as a form-able, tangible, almost sculptural medium ripe for manipulation. She is attracted to the neutral quality of paint, and its liquidity, finding it as responsive as clay. In several large-scale works using household paint, she uses the infrastructure of paint as a surface and backing/canvas, pushing material to its limits. She understands that household paint decays – and loses the qualities that she values, but these qualities are too appealing and irresistible. They allow her to create sensual, all curved lines and skin-like material, papery thin and fragile or seductive as treacle but repulsive as a wound. They appear as ‘skins lifted off the surface of the painting’, magically suspended in mid-air, a merging of light, colour and gravity.