Jenny Käll - Memory Palaces

7 – 14 September 2024

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​Dissolution and Object Community are collaborating to present the works of Jenny Käll for the first time in Georgia.

Jenny Käll works through a place and material-driven practice with sculpture, installation, text and video elements. Her work revolves around the human relationship to materials, places and landscapes, striving to get as close as possible to these things. Her installations can be seen as a poetic play on the border between object and body, figurative and abstract, constant and fleeting, where various materials are allowed to merge seamlessly into each other. Sculptures, objects and situations are organized to investigate their potential kinship.​

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Arcadia (Greek: Αρκαδία) is a term in European culture denoting a certain idyllic space set against a backdrop of majestic landscapes, an unattainable utopia of harmony between man and nature. Named after the Greek region of Arcadia, it found a second life in 19th century parks and palaces throughout Europe. Soviet architects, while designing the extensive network of sanatoriums in Tskaltubo, found inspiration from these estates and palaces. They sought to find their own interpretation of the unattainable and utopian Arcadia - civilization dissolved in wild nature, or, perhaps, wild nature recreated in civilization. These sanatoriums became a reflection of the dream of paradise gardens, giving health and peace in virgin nature, gardens accessible to all. Here it seemed possible to see how man and nature could coexist. 

 

However, time has taken its toll. The Soviet-era planned economy was replaced by a market economy, and many unprofitable sanatoriums closed. However, the trees within the gardens nestled amongst the structures did not stop growing. The garden city turned into a forest city, and the attempted coexistence of civilization and nature was decided in favor of the latter.  The wooden table let the alder that fell into its cracks grow and became wood again, the stone steps crumbled under the onslaught of precipitation and wind, turning into a pile of stones again. The marble floor of the central hall covered with cracks can hardly be distinguished from a marble quarry. This is how natural materials processed and returned the gardens to their original state and raw appearance. 

 

The same happens with memories of places. The rains washes out one’s dreams, conversations and quarrels and declarations of love sprout grass. The building leaves empty shells of rooms that birds, dogs and people hurry to occupy. Another living element bursts into empty palaces with their locks removed. What new memory do they bring with them, and what will they leave behind in the empty garden? A garden on the rubble of which they are trying to build their new home. 

 

Going through the photographs and artifacts collected by the artist on the territory of the former sanatorium, the question naturally arises whether its current ruined state is not the truest reflection of the image of that utopian Arcadia to which man aspired. Perhaps all attempts to recreate anything bring us back to where we started. Something real.

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Curators 

David Finestein & Egor Miroshnichenko

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Text by Egor Miroshnichenko