Worn Twilight

Paolo Sorrentino asks a sherpa to take his bedside table to the top of his creation. There are no good dreams without a bedside table!

Sherpa and Paolo are on their way.

5.2.2022

-Mati Kütt

Mati Kütt writes such preface to his exhibition at Haus Gallery. These words speak, of course, to the artist's artwork with the same subject, titled "Paolo Sorrentino’s Bedside Table". The work is painted on a large enough canvas (90 x 120 cm) to accommodate one notable creative peak with a passage to a table. Without seeing the painting, a series of pictures of sherpa can be imagined, sympathetic about the difficulty of carrying the table, but who are happy with their mission, which seems noble, even if it is difficult to understand - why would anyone need a bedside table to create something? Paolo is, just like Mati.

It is exactly these types of stories that Mati Kütt tells with his works, which come from somewhere on the border between absurdity and reality, joyfully waving his legs in a slightly singing mouth. Looking at Kütt’s art, reading the titles and narratives, it is a positive pleasure to sit in line with the pictures, and state "why not" rather than asking confused "in what sense" ?

Mati Kütt always keeps a notebook on top of his nightstand, where he can record inspiring dreams before they dissipate into the morning light. This could be the reason why the title of the exhibition has come to be "Worn Twilight," the most mysterious and stimulating moment for Mati, the night. However, the artist also refers to the writer Mati Undi, whose poetry of obscurity has always fascinated him, equally to the poetry of Juhan Liivi's gloomy impressions. Inspired by them, Mati has consciously searched for spots of light, sincerely rejoicing over his findings.

Mati Kütt's work is intriguing and captivating in every way. His cinematically playful world seems to nullify the logic of the real world for a moment, to make the viewer think about its true nature and pleasantly doubt it. The angles from which the artist views his characters or objects, the proportions in which he presents them to each other, the associations he creates make the relationship between reality and appearance questionable. What is more real is either how we have been taught to understand things, situations and people, or how the world seems to guide everyone's interpretations and imagination. The collision of "I" and “The World" is obviously one of the biggest sources of conflict.

In his work, Mati Kütt turns the words "I" and “The World" upside down in a good way, showing them in all sorts of ways. In Mati's paintings, the swans are the same size as him, the mushrooms are at similar heights as the forest, aquatic creatures are equivalent to the creatures above water and birds are companions to humans on a branch. Whatever you analyze, convincingly, the most important thing for Mati is the enjoyable process of creation, the element of its course, the movement of his points and the excessive rationalization of anything - the ability to see and depict both general and individual significance at the same time. Although Mati Kütt says that he does not want to be repeatedly or recognizably as himself in his work, he is in a good way. His cheerful, free-moving, non-coercive, energy-striking energetic undercurrents, which revolve the essence and content of everything, are simply so strong that they always make his work complimentary hilarious.

Mati Kütt (1947) is an acclaimed animated film director, caricaturist and painter. He started painting in the Juhan Muksi studio in the 1960s, later studying energy at the Tallinn University of Technology. As an animator, Kütt started working in Tallinnfilm in the early 1970s with several colleagues, who had become legends at the time, such as Rein Raamat, Priit Pärn, Avo Paistik and others. His first caricatures for Pikker magazine and for Spike and Hammer newspaper also date from the same time. Mati Kütt has been a freelance artist since the mid-1990s. In the early 2000s, he has also taught experimental animation at Denver College of Design, Colorado. Mati Kütt is a member of the Estonian Cinema Association, the Estonian Artists' Union and the Painters' Union.

Piia Ausman

Curator