MARKO MÄETAMM (1965) will open his personal exhibition Distilled Love at Hobusepea gallery at 6pm, November 20, 2007.

To begin with, the pieces for this exhibition were produced simultaneously with those for the Venice Biennale, which makes it simple to conclude that the subject matter of the exhibition is more or less the same. Unlike The Loser's Paradise, Mäetamm won't present himself as a pathetic loser whom it would be easy to feel superior to, to identify yourself with, to emphatize with, to laugh at. The loser has become a cold-blooded, calculating owner controlling and monitoring his family, both loving and hating it. In order to free himself from responsibility and guilty conscience, Mäetamm is cleaning his family to get rid of the disturbing characteristics, and distilling his relationship to his family almost to the degree of emotionlessness.

The distance and coldness that he is achieving is even more convicing in its emotionless sterility, allowing Mäetamm to contradict the image of him being a joker. Having known the artist for years, and irrespectively of the fact, I definitely don't support the opinion of calling Mäetamm a wisecracker. I am just not comfortable or interested in identifying myself with the problems of surviving bank loans and family life of a man in his forties, so his work does not make me catch my breath. I am still absolutely positive that as ironic, cynical and even a bit untruthful as Mäetamm can be, his videos and paintings are most definitely not showing blood and he is not presenting his relationship to his family "just for fun".

To end with, let us ask - how far can you go with possibility before it will become reality?

Elin Kard

Exhibition will be open until December 3, 2007.

Supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

MARKO MÄETAMM

Born in 1965 in Viljandi, Estonia
Lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia

www.maetamm.net

Selected solo exhibitions:

2007
-Distilled Love, Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia
-From There to Here, Nosbaum&Reding - Art Contemporain, Luxembourg
-Loser`s Paradise, Estonian Pavilion at 52. International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
2006
-Artists' Studio, London, UK
2005
-The End, Tallinn City Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia
-Memorial Show Tallinn City Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia
2004
-Speaking Houses, kArton Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
- Contemporary Art Centre Rekalde, Bilbao, Spain
2003
-Marko und Kaido by John Smith (with Kaido Ole), Estonian Pavilion at 50. International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
2002
-X MISTAKES Y FOR Z, Rotermann Salt Storage (Art Museum of Estonia), Tallinn, Estonia
2001
-Amentia, Gallery Platan, Budapest, Hungary
2000
-Me Supernatural, Tallinn Art Hall Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia

Selected group exhibitions and projects:

2007
-STILL HERE: humour in post-communist performance video, Artspace, Sydney, Australia
-Political&Poetical, 14th Tallinn Print Triennial, KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia
-Baltic States, part III, Contemporary Art From Estonia, Kalmar Konstmuseum, Kalmar, Sweden
-Innocence and Despair, g39, Cardiff, Wales
-Ich was here, Galerii Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, Germany
-Priroda i društvo/Parallel Lines, Muzej Rupe (Dubrovacki muzeji), Dubrovnik, Croatia
-We like it a lot, Nettie Horn Gallery, London, UK
-anger_aggression, KunstRaum Goethestrasse, Linz, Austria
-Exploding Cinema, The Half Moon, London, UK
-Dialogues, 13 Vilnius Painting Triennial, Centre for Contemporary Art, Vilnius, Lithuania

2006
-Fiktive Bauten und Städte in der Literatur, Architekturmuseum TU München, Pinakothek der Moderne, München, Germany
-Cannibal Ferox, T1+2 Gallery, London, UK
-Collected Crises, Estonian Art in the 1990s. KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia
-Wake Up! Rauma biennale Balticum 2006. Rauma Art Museum, Finland
-Videoart From The Baltics Kunstraum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
-Emergency Biennale, Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn, Estonia
-Shiftscale - Sculpture at the Extended Field KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia

2005
-The 6th Baltic Contemporary Art Biennale HABITAT, Museum of Contemporary Art dept. of the National Museum in Szczecin, Poland
-Blur of The Otherwordly, Center for Art and Visual Culture, Baltimore, USA
-Thrust, 26th International Biennial of Graphic Art. Ljubljana, Slovenia
-Pyyteetön Rakkaus/ Undemanding Love, Rauma Art Museum, Finland
-Island Art Film & Video Festival '05, Prenelle Gallery, London, UK

2004
-EU-Positive, Akademie der Kunst, Berlin, Germany
-13th Tallinn Print Triennial, Rotermann Salt Storage (Art Museum of Estonia), Tallinn, Estonia

2002
-About Belief, South London Gallery, London, UK

2001
-ARS01, Kiasma, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland

2000
-Painterly Issues, Vilnius Painting Triennial. Centre for Contemporary Art, Vilnius, Lithuania