Paul Kuimet (EE, b. 1984) is an Estonian artist who works with photography, 16 mm film, and mixed-media installation. The indivisibility of a depicted material and the image’s material support is a recurring motif in his practice, as is the tension between formal qualities and narrative possibilities. In his work, materials – such as the tracing paper used in architectural drawings – operate as both subject matter and as malleable tools for the creation of new forms and spaces.
Kuimet’s Suite is a series of analogue photographic prints depicting close details of architectural plans from an archive belonging to the artist’s mother – architect Tiina Soans. Kuimet’s response to the archive explores the transparency of the paper on which these plans are rendered, inviting the viewer to see through multiple surfaces and spaces, as if seeing through the photographic image itself. Overlaid with abstract colour blocks and gradients to underscore a tension between the layered depth of the image and the material flatness of the photographic object, Kuimet’s works create a sculptural dialogue between two flat surface types. Hand-printed by the artist in the darkroom, the colour gradient overlaying each image is therefore unique.
