I don’t know Sigrid Viir. I have not interviewed her until now, just looked at her work. She neatly overcomes the first problem of a young artist. She grabs our attention, first of all with a sharp, almost vicious sense of colour that insinuates itself straight into the blood stream, but also by posting the photographs as part of a sculpture installation. This is not just about packaging, but is a way of reframing the way we are used to thinking about art works. She is trying to tackle the oldest dilemma of photography: when the shutter closes, it stops time. Today, our concept of a work of art is changing rapidly, against the understanding of art as a single, stilled moment captured by a solitary genius. Sigrid Viir appears to be part of this mutation.

[…] I walked around her installations, which forced you to stand at different angles. Sometimes the structures were very similar to easels. There was a temporary edge to it. They were awkward. How could you live with these? And the world inside the photographs was confused with objects stacked in bizarre ways, filed dysfunctionally, arranged as if the inhabitants of the land within them were very different from us.

[…] There are references to other art. One thinks of Rebecca Horn, or earlier kinetic art. In the colours and her sparing use of shapes, there is more than a whiff of the wunderkind of the moment, Elad Lassry. As I’ve said, I don’t know Sigrid Viir, but while I am look at her work, I am constantly expecting a surprise.

—Excerpted from “I Don’t Know Sigrid Viir,” an interview with the artist by Alistair Hicks, Senior Curator, Deutsche Bank. From the catalog Sigrid Viir: Selected Works, 2012, published by Temnikova and Kasela Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia.

Sigrid Viir was born in 1979 and lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia. In addition to multiple group exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States, Viir is a member of the highly acclaimed three-artist collective Visible Solutions LLC, whose work is included in Manifesta 9, which takes place in Limburg Belgium, June – September 2012. In May 2012, Viir was the recipient of the Pulse Prize, given every year in recognition of an outstanding solo project in the New York art fair. Viir is represented by Temnikova and Kasela Gallery in Tallinn, Estonia.