Personal exhibition "QUEENS of CHAOS", Myymälä Gallery, Helsinki, 2023 December, curated by Ramiro Camelo.

Myymälä2 is pleased to present “Queens of Chaos” with brand new artworks by Estonian artist Katrin Valgemäe, the exhibition marks her first solo show outside Estonia. The main body of work is a series of kitschy stylistic paintings which are influenced both —with equal enthusiasm— by visual imagery shaped by watching Finnish TV advertising during her childhood and a fictional and sarcastic allegory on Estonian consumerism during the last decade of the Soviet occupation. Ultimately, the exhibitions try to connect different timelines, from the fake dreams of socialism to the rapturous 1990s in independent Estonia and the present.

The sophisticated look of Valgemäe’s women, or queens, clashes with their intention of promoting brands of almost banal commodities, “Felix”, “Kalev”, “Pedigree”, etc. However, one can think that th gorgeous visual imagery of Valgemäe’s wish to extend beyond their canvases. Somehow, it is not strange to think that Valgemäe’s burlesque portraits mixture of high and low depicting kooky, cheeky and coquettish women are topically affiliated with some of the endless shared awkwardly confessional selfied-mirrored promotional Tik-Toks videos.

The exhibition’s curator Ramiro Camelo, advises us to look Valgemäe’s canvases more scrupulously. He says: “What attracted me to Valgemäe paintings, from the very beginning, is that they are executed with a deliberate mannered flamboyance, which turns her style a bit whimsy and offbeat. In doing so she creates a weirdly blissful visual mood. I must insist don’t take her paintings at face value, Valgemäe’s pictorical manner is in fact both highly skilled and technically smarter than it may at first seem."