Ove Büttner Moving Through Time Tunnel

Ove Büttner, a painter, has managed to make a name for himself at group and personal exhibitions both in Estonia as well as abroad in spite of his youth (born in 1959). There is an exhibition of his works, "Time Tunnel", currently opened in Tallinn Town Prison Museum (behind the Town Hall) .
Ove Büttner is a unique master of colours. A painter who can make the colours mystically shine on the canvas. Somehow or other the viewer falls under the influence of the unquestionably positive and buoyant energetic field of his pictures. In fact, the artists leaves the viewer the limitless freedom to let one's fantasy fly. The limits are symbolic. However, these are limits, too.

Ove Büttner: Works that are exposed here have been painted during a three-quarter of a year. Summers usually pass by constantly painting. I painted three months in Finland -  in the common studio of Turku Free Academy.
* What are prevailing trends in Finnish art life?
In Finland, information spreads very quickly and suddenly. Finnish artists hardly miss Kassel Art Fair that predominantly consists of installations and where the proportion of paintings is small. This determines trends.
* Has any of your works been interpreted in a completely different and surprising way?
At my previous exhibition I displayed a painting, "Resurrection". A guy looked at it and was of the opinion that it depicted a stormy sea.
In fact, a painting lives much longer that just one show - after several years, everything might seem otherwise.
* Time tunnel?
There was a project at Kassel Art Fair: a long metal shed with numerous monitors and television sets transmitting a certain video programme, so that anyone passing through the shed might sense himself being inside time. I liked the idea. I started to look for exhibition premises where a motif of arch would appear. The interior of Town Prison Museum is very interesting,  because pictures invade the room, become more independent and start to influence the room itself. The limestone floor and rough walls are wonderful indeed.
The basic keywords to be stressed are the following: years, galaxies, Phoenix. The firebird as a symbol - the intermediate between the genesis and mouldering away.
The theme is a mythological vision of the eternal cycle of matter, the content treats the problematic opposition in our era of highly technicist electrotechnological upheaval, considering enormous acceleration processes, which key factor is time. Tunnel in time is an attempt to visualize the era for myself. Processes that take place on earth are an experiment. There is a desire to acquire the ideas of pristine worlds. Releasing the matter involves the transmission of ideas.

At the opening ceremony, the President of Estonian Painters' Association, Kreg A-Kristring, expressed the following thoughts: "Every era has its limits, as this time and tunnel has its limits. I am intrigued, where are you going further, because the experiment has been launched."