Powder coated steel, 240 × 352 × 190 cm; two C-prints, each 48 × 48 cm
The installation was initially designed for the solo exhibition Five Volumes at Narva Art Residency in 2018 where it acted both as a spatial extension of forms seen in the 16mm films that were presented in the exhibition, as well as a display structure for two photographs. These C-prints, entitled White House (1-2), depict Pärnu KEK’s housing unit ‘Golden Home’ from afar. The composition of the photographs refers to the 1970s—the era in which the ‘Golden Home’ was built and when a white house inserted into a landscape was a widely used motif in Estonian printmaking and painting. The installation together with the photographs is the fourth piece in the cycle of works inspired by the Pärnu KEK Construction Company’s housing and industrial complex that was built in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“All projection based works within the Five Volumes exhibition create cinematographic spaces and open windows through the projection screen, like the familiar screen in the cinemas: light from the projector bounces back from the screen into our eyes, and precisely because of this we are tricked in believing there is a world behind the screen, which eventually makes the screen permeable. This is also why Kuimet’s new installation Display for Optical C-Prints with White House (1–2) (2018) becomes such a potent choreographic nexus at Narva. A container, a unit whose walls are mere lines becomes a room in a room and simultaneously an openly accessible display for two photographic images of Pärnu KEK’s Kuldne Kodu from far away. As landscapes with dramatic skies, sunbeams and clouds they return formally to a pictorial landscape in which the architecture functions as an open promise – as an image inserted into a seemingly natural surrounding.“
– Nico Anklam, Paul Kuimet’s Five Volumes. Introduction text to the exhibition Five Volumes at Narva Art Residency, 2018