Maksla XO Gallery at FOTO TALLINN 2026 –

Artists - Roman Korovin, David Penny

Booth - MAKSLA XO

https://fototallinn.ee/en/about/

At Foto Tallinn 2026, Maksla XO presents an exhibition bringing together works by British photographer and photography researcher David Penny and Latvian visual artist, photographer, and painter Roman Korovin. Although working across different artistic and conceptual approaches, both artists explore the possibilities of photography through repetition, abstraction, light, and the transformation of ordinary or scientific processes into poetic visual experiences.The exposition is about space, emptiness, and tonality; the poetics and stillness of the object; the boundaries and intersections between science and art.

Roman Korovin: “This photography series should be perceived as photo poems or as pictures of a naive old movie coming out of your memory. Or if you prefer you can take it like a glass of champagne in the morning of sunny Saturday. This photoalbum was made in spring on the deserted beach of Jūrmala. It is quite transparent and poetic unlike my earlier post-punk photo attacks.
I take pictures and use them to create visual poetry and stories. Then I use them to compile books. When working within the book format, I use the rhythm of pages, diptychs, repeating frames, pauses etc. The titles of my works and their texts are important to me. Words bring the spectator and the artist closer to each other, preventing the spectator from getting carried away by the debris of his own clichés and whims. Words can enhance the work. Without words, some works are meaningless” – Roman Korovin, 2011.
Roman Korovinš  Garden Close to the Sea series is based on the repeated use of the same motif, with only minor variations in light, framing, or movement. Presented as diptychs, these repetitions form sequences in which meaning emerges through subtle shifts of tone and rhythm. The artist described such works as “the shortest stories ever”, with each pair marking a beginning and an end. Between them lies what he called a kind of “zero state” – a silent interval in which seemingly nothing happens, yet the passage of time becomes perceptible. 

David Penny: “The photographic moment is less about copying what already is, and instead part of an extended process of becoming, being more speculative and productive. The images have a visual resemblance to early scientific research, where outcomes of experiments were fixed and registered. Immaterial phenomena, which might have previously only been describable by words, or observed fleetingly, could be made tangible and measurable.” 
David Penny’s Registrations series develops from an exploratory question: what happens when making a photograph using a single wavelength of light? Created through cameraless photographic processes in collaboration with physicists at King’s College London, the works investigate the material and scientific foundations of photography. His photograms transform controlled exposure into abstract images, shifting the medium away from representation and towards an exploration of light, matter, space, and perception.

Support:
Ltd “Mākslas galerija Māksla XO” on the 10th of April 2024 signed an agreement No 17.1-1-L-2024/189  with the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia on receiving support for export assistance under the project “SME Innovative Business Development” co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.

                     Artglass by Groglass