Georgian Contemporary Art on the Vilnius Summit

Georgian art world is also getting ready for the Vilnius summit; Gala Gallery, sponsored by the Georgian Ministry of Culture will present the Georgian Contemporary art to the wider European audience. Gala gallery belongs to the list of the few Georgian galleries who pay attention to the concept and context of their exhibitions. The series of Kote Sulaberidze, Vakho Bughadze and Murtaz Shvelidze take the central stage in the exposition curated by Dedika Bulia and Vato Tsereteli for the Kalnas gallery, Vilnius.

Dedika Bulia: ‘All three of the painters closely cooperate with the gallery and we have accomplished many projects together. All of them are the generation of 90s. These painters share the European value system and their art reflects their pro-European orientation, but at the same time do not lose their distinctiveness.’ Gala gallery is the first to have an opportunity to present themselves to the European audience. The owner of the gallery and the author of the concept for the exhibition, Dedika Bulia claims to aim at presenting the good quality Georgian art and those artists, who strive for producing art of European standards.

The last two exhibitions - Jump by Murtaz Shvelidze and Vakho Bughadze’s Asprovalta are the two shows that the Lithuanian team have seen while visiting Georgia, consequently choosing the Gala gallery.

The Jump is a series of 13 canvases. The 12 of them, dramatically cropped portray different people in various settings fixing their shoelaces. It is fascinating to see the shoes composing portraits of people. However, the point is that individuals regardless their social standing or the lifestyle, still create artificial problems and restrictions for themselves. The series culminates in a large canvas named Jump. The girl is portrayed in the process of jumping; as the other canvases, the depicted angle is unusual- her dress and legs floating in the air are the focus. The blue sky, green grass, thin dress create careless mood- such a contrast to the tight sneakers and uncomfortable shoes. This is the freedom, all of us have a potential of that we resist for no reason.

Asprovalta by Vakho Bughadze drastically differs from Murtaz Shvelidze's lively, almost toxic colours, however, it fits in perfectly in the gloomy palette of the painter. The focus of the series is the abandoned houses and homeless dogs, which echo many social problems of today. The faintly defined high-rise buildings translate the grey feel the city has attained; the windows indicated by grey rectangles hint on the non-existent life behind them; the dog alike figures on the foreground are destined for solitude. All of this is engulfed into pinkish mist, revealing a hint of hope that keeps these creatures alive. According to the painter these series reveal the memories from the past: the life he had been living and the unclear world, a desire or waiting for change and novelty.

The Sky-24 hours by Kote Sulaberidze has been exhibited in the Gala gallery while hosting the Artisterium V. The fragment from the painting is used as a poster for the exhibition. It is quite common for the artist to compose an artwork from multiple canvases; the Sky-24 Hours is made of 24 standard sized canvases, illustrating the sky and objects flying across it on different times of a day. Sometimes this is an airplane, angels or bombs, birds and strippers. Kote Sulaberidze: ' the Sky- 24 hours is a metaphor for life. Everything happens under the sky. All of us live under the sky. The bombs fall from the sky and the almighty God is also in the sky. Sometimes it rains and at times the warm sun is shining. This contrast makes it captivating and mysteriously beautiful.' Kote Sulaberidze is always modest when he has to talk about his art. His oeuvre reflects the lyricism, enthusiasm and inexhaustible optimism of the artist. His very aesthetic art never loses the humoristic touch, even when referring to some of the most acute social problems.

Kote Jincharadze has presented an installation System of Coordination- IV dimension. ‘The installation places Georgia on the geopolitical system of coordinates of the world.The ¾ of the coordinate system are the spaces reflected in the mirror, creating intersections of the trajectories- a kind of crossroad. The vectors of 4 different colours personifying countries, cross each other corresponding to the political interests and relations of these countries.

Red- Russia

Blue- West (Europe, USA)

Green- East (Asia)

Yellow- China

The mirror offers audience the visual trajectory of Georgia’s positioning and development. Each of the spectators can choose a rectangle and place it on the surface of the mirror, therefore, stating their opinion about the aspirations of Georgia.’ According to the artist this is the visualization of the value system. The interactive artwork is a kind of sociological research, when the audience reflected in the mirror record their opinion and the desirable future for Georgia. As Kote says every time he puts up the installation, the blue squares are always winning indicating the pro-European orientation of the Georgian society.

The Constructive Dialogue by Oleg Timchenko is about the newest history of Georgia, which exceeded the locality and became world news, namely the August war of 2008. Timchenko has summarised the provoking reasons, his attitude and the aftermath mood in the video collage. 'A fragment is taken from the film-ballet Othello. The flags of USA and Russia are inserted as the background. The most tragic fragment from the dance of Vakhtang Chabukiani, personifies Georgia. It is not accidental that this is the most dramatic, culminating moment in the ballet. The pain and the feeling of despair that the dancer has masterly translated is identified with the state of Georgia.' It was vital for the exposition presented on the summit to include the politics, especially the August war.

Vato Tsereteli curates Video Art section demanded by the Lithuanian side. Vato, artist himself is a head of CCA. The Center for Contemporary Art besides hosting some very interesting exhibitions takes students for a non-formal MA program. CCA provides the vital knowledge and freedom to the future artists that academy of fine arts in Tbilisi lacks. The artist sees the center as one of his artworks. 'I find it forced to discuss the contemporary art; art does not need specifying whether it is contemporary or not. What makes art contemporary is its relation to reality and time it is created in.’

Vato during his stay in Vilnius has to deliver a public lecture. 'It will concern the creative and art practices that are little known or defined, at least in Georgia. For example, we have an educational program, which in itself is an artistic product. I would like to talk about creativity not in terms of producing art, but other processes, for example creativity in the educational system. My lecture will be about the new territories in art. Our center is an exciting synthesis of the educational and exhibition practices, which in itself is an accidental discovery and has a promising perspective. Everyone is creative, but the artist is ingenious by profession, therefore, I think they should use this and it should exceed the gallery space and integrate into other spheres. For example we have a course of art and eco-farming; this is not about Land Art or exhibiting vegetables in a museum space, but about incorporating the capabilities and being productive into that domain.

Georgian society itself is marginalised and it is not the fault of people. I think this is a deeply traumatised society as a consequence of the Soviet Union and the following, 20 years; but we have agreed that this has to change. The society has to develop itself, has to awaken the sense of responsibility and desire to participate for us to form into a democratic country. Education plays the key role that's why we have the programs and courses. In my opinion contextual knowledge is vital, any human being needs to know and realise the context they wake up to, I mean awakening to the consciousness; when you do not have a clue about the reality you live in, the geo-political environment, historical and cultural heritage, you are not adequate; hence, the anachronistic moments in art as well as life.

Art that is based on imagination has the ability to help the people lacking it. Koka Ramishvili has noticed that there is no science fiction genre in Post-Soviet countries, because this part of the brain, responsible for creative thinking is dumbed out. Art has the ability to activate it, so that people recognize their potential. This might prove crucial.'-Vato Tsereteli.

For the exposition Down Up Vato Tsereteli has chosen videos the Drawing Lesson, 2001 by Koka Ramishvili, Eye Trees,2003 Mamuka Japharidze and the Gripes, 2012 by Nino Sekhniashvili.

Vato Tsereteli: 'I have selected the artworks and not the artists. These videos are referential because of their complexity and visual quality. It is personal too; these are the artists I closely cooperate with. They relate to the exhibition contextually rather than thematically. The people living between the West and Georgia have produced these videos. Therefore, they seem to unite the two realities. The intensity and the accumulated energy of these works were the main attraction for me.'

Koka Ramishvili reverses the process of drawing and the video begins with the sketch being erased. The deconstructed painting stays in the memory. Therefore, art becomes writing, the drawing becomes a notebook; the story of an individual isolated from his usual habitat is written as a result. Ramishvili has created the Drawing Lesson after moving to Geneva. This video has marked the return to image that the artist had abandoned for 10 years. Koka Ramishvili:' back then this video went against the conventional video art production. I was creating something radical and eccentric. This was the biography I was writing with the drawn pictures. The sketches themselves were of quite low quality because my focus was the montage. I have created a sculpture in a virtual space, at that stage I was exploring compression and decompression. It was important for me to show the prohibited in the West, I wanted to portray the manual labor.' It is fascinating to observe Ramishvili opposing the drawing, as the traditional medium to the innovatory video; the two seemingly incomprehensible media create the art that highlights the craftsmanship in drawing. The soundtrack, the sound of lead pencil scratching the paper points to the acoustic side of the job. Employing the montage the artist breaks the central myth of the documentary and objective nature of video.

Nino Sekhniashvili is a very interesting conceptual artist. The Nectar Gallery is one of her projects in the Georgian Art scene. The expositions always manage to surprise the audience with the unlikely emphases. This is the only gallery that hosts the risky and alternative art, like the recent exhibition of Kutaisi and Tskaltubo artists.

The video Gripes was created while living in Zurich. 'In the Finnegan’s Wake there is an episode from Aesop's fable the Fox and the Grapes. Joyce customizes this with the different language, actually, no language at all. I have put the text onto the recording in the foam plastic factory- the huge objects were floating defying the gravity laws. At the time when I lived in Zurich on scholarship, I was attending the readings in the James Joyce society, which were quite comical for me, as they sounded delirious; therefore, I decided to work on the text. Gibberish is very important to me, as I often find myself incapable of expressing my thoughts.'- says Nino Sekhniashvili.

In Mamuka Japharidze’s video the trees resemble the human faces with the help of optical illusions. The mysterious feel of the video plays with the imagination of the spectator and lets them decide the narration and culmination for themselves. Mamuka Japharidze is the artist who has directed his creative potential into farming and has an Art farm in Shindisi, where he combines art and eco-farming; he also tries to engage the students and reads the lectures about soft farming to them.

The exhibition Down Up opened on the 20th of November, Vilnius,Lithuania, Gallery Kalnas and will last for a month.

Florian Pumhösl's Georgian Letters

Florian Pumhösl's Georgian Letters

Florian Pumhösl’s five series of Clichés (2012), debuting in London, were created using a stamping implement of the same name, itself an onomatopoeic French word that describes the ‘cliché’ sound a metal press makes each time it is struck in the printing process.

Each Cliché work is formed of three plaster panels that progress in size, with the gaps between the works also growing exponentially. Unlike traditional triptychs, these trios appear to be identical in their minimalist visual language, despite their leaps in scale, as if each design had been rescaled and reproduced in triplicate. This seriality is also evident in the formal patterns that dance across the plaster panels, the whole installation recalling a musical score or a time-based sequence.

Aside from references to early Modern art, Pumhösl’s stamp paintings display his interests in pre-Columbian textile patterns and three-dimensional architectural space. For his latest series, the artist has stamped old Georgian script on to plaster using the same printing block method, effectively reproducing letters – some obsolete, others manipulated or misprinted – from an alphabet that is unreadable to all but Georgian natives or scholars of ancient languages.

Whether the starting point is typography or textiles, Pumhösl creates a new vocabulary at one remove from recognition. He describes his quest to transform images and objects into elegant and spare arrangements as one of a struggle with the medium of mass-reproduction: “Whatever abstraction might represent historically, to me it is a tool to measure my freedom”.

Exhibition Press Release 
http://www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/florian-pumhosl--2#

Copyright artist and Lisson Gallery

HERITAGE at the museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi

Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts is hosting an exhibition with the intriguing title Heritage. A group of Levan Mindiashvili, Uta Bekaia, Irakli Bugiani, Cristian Tonhaiser and Tato Akhalkatsishvili display their thoughts about the history, heritage and its relevance to the present. The press release opens up with: ‘Georgian society, like every other Post-Soviet country, tries to rehabilitate their identity by rummaging into remote, idealised past and the traditions, often ignoring the recent experiences’. These are the very few people who have noticed the trend for neglecting and blindsiding the 70 years of Soviet Union and realised the problem with forgetting and refusing to analyse.

Modernity for Georgia and probably for the societies that have centuries old culture is a tricky concept. It is very hard to find a balance between past, history, traditions and present day lifestyle in order to be adequate with the rest of the world. But what is peculiar in modern Georgia is the total amnesia of the 70 years of the Soviet rule. The traumas of the regime and its painful break-up have resulted in total desire of forgetting rather than analysing and drawing conclusions; the group, realising the importance of that history into shaping the modern Georgian mentality decided to tackle this task.

The theme of identity is the focus of Levan Mindiashvili’s art. Being responsible for the concept of the exhibition, it was not surprising to involve the question of identity; similar to Levan’s oeuvre, the exhibition revolves around very personal and individual sensations and experiences. Levan Mindiashvili: ‘Our aim is to think about the constructions that are the basis of the identity, revealing those conscious or unconscious factors that shape an individual and form them into units of society.’ It is noteworthy that these artists are the ones who have experienced the Soviet Union in its worst colours. Born at its decline, they have witnessed its break-up and Georgia’s struggle to become an independent democratic country; they have first hand experienced the difficulties of system changes, those traumatic practices that have left the society into mass amnesia.

Architecture is still the focus of Levan’s canvases as the perfect documentation of the society; he has concentrated on the facades of the Painters House and a Church. The building of Painters House is crucial to the 90s history of Georgia. It was one of the very characteristic institutions of the Soviet rule, where the art dogmatism and its propagandist nature were strictly controlled; it is only natural for the artist who thinks about the Soviet past, to analyse Soviet attitude towards art. However, nowadays, instead of Soviet dogmatism, the Painter’s House came to be a reference to the Civil War in Tbilisi. The historical façade of the building, the new fundament (at this moment the Museum of Modern Art is being built there) and its project overlap each other. The random red circles point to the blood that was shed on the Rustaveli Avenue from the 1989.

Levan Mindiashvili: ‘ The Painter’s House is the post-Christian apprehension of the culture; it is a very important, symbolic and at the same time propagandist building. It had a very distinguished function and its destroying, with the rise of national movement, was very symbolic; as if it got shattered along with the Soviet rule.’

The opposite wall sports the painting of a Church of the same size and tones. The browns, ochre and the cream tones suit the aesthetics of a cathedral more: vertical, thin, opaque forms resemble the light seeping in through the church windows. The project, the ruins and the sketches of a church intersect each other in here too. 

Religion, which after the breakdown of the Soviet rule became very relevant, plays a vital role in the social life of the country. Those centuries old traditions are still pertinent and play crucial role shaping the national identity today. The boom of religion might have been caused by the Soviet trauma and as a protest against it, the large amount of the population strictly follows the orthodox Christian lifestyle. Politicians constantly exploit religion for their own interests. The painting of the Church voices the research of the past that becomes problematic in relation to the present rhythm of living.

Installation Archive revolves around the headless figure of a man. The wax head is showcased in a vitrine, the objects surround the dismantled human.  The very interesting and characteristic objects seem to be handpicked from the conscious of the figure, as the key components of his identity. There is a green notebook, the generations have been writing their homework in; the cover of the Georgian History textbook, the 8^th of March postcard, the Georgian Artists Union pass, Sokhumi tourist booklet- these are the everyday objects that one day just disappeared from the Georgian reality. Instead the 9^th of April, ‘LOVE IS’ chewing gum, the new Georgian passport and the Sokhumi military map have appeared. The downcast face in the vitrine is in a direct dialogue with the bloody hands and the bandaged legs on the wall. These are the remnants of the crippled and traumatised generation that went through the Civil war and the Abkhazian conflict.

The main inspiration of Irakli Bugiani, the photos of Soviet prospects found on the online archive, acquire new lives on his canvases. These paintings were not created exclusively for this exhibition, however, in this context, they have highlighted the potential of architecture as the mediator of the historical heritage. Irakli Bugiani: ‘the idea is of Soviet architecture- every regime creates its distinctive architecture, influencing the individual. It is remarkable to research what kind of psychology is formed when living in this environment and being surrounded with these buildings.’

The culmination of the series is the diptych Gldani Parking. It is interesting to review Gldani as the Post-Soviet phenomena. The area was built in the Soviet Tbilisi, nevertheless, already in the democratic Georgia it expanded and got densely populated. Accordingly, the district corresponds to these artists, the Soviet kids after the breakdown of systems and gaining freedom have to navigate in the reality with the Soviet baggage; the Gldani area with its attached loggias and illegal garages is the equivalent of this hybrid society.

The white buildings of Bugiani’s canvases are cracked, grey and dirty in reality. This reminds of the nostalgia many people feel and their idealising of the past- everything was perfect them. It seems like these buildings run away from the feeling of inadequacy with the reality and look into the time when they were the symbols of Soviet advancing. This is the black humour with which Irakli criticises the whole epoch where individuals where squashed and the people who are ill with romanticizing that past.

Tato Akhalkacishvili has a very distinctive painting style. He works in oil but exploits the medium in a very unusual way for the Georgian trends. His surfaces are always clean and smooth. At this stage the artist actively employs collage in his paintings. Tato Akhalkacishvili: ‘I’ve been interested in academism since my childhood and I’ve always been improving my knowledge in that direction. The knowledge of academic painting gave me a possibility of expressing different emotions. I am all for the academic studies but I disapprove of getting stuck in there. I think there is so much of accumulated experience in art, there’s so much tried out, I think an artist should not purposefully look for new techniques. They should not aim at painting like no one else in the world. One should paint freely, purposefully and cleverly use the practice that centuries long art history provides.’

The central figures of the canvases are often the cut out kids from photos and posters. The phenomena of heritage can be discussed in many aspects- genetics, unconsciously passed information and the experience we had inherited. The focus of Tato Akhalkatsishvili, the childhood is the period when this unconscious protrudes easily, the intuitive existing is not petrified by the moral boundaries.

The Soviet sports hall of blue shiny walls and white chalky ceiling sports a pool on the painting Born. Like most of the Soviet buildings, it is in the process of decaying. The portrait of Stalin, a bit higher than the centre of the canvas, with red background captures the attention momentarily. The leader gazes out proudly at the younger generation- the kids in the toy cars, who are destined to die in the waterless swimming pool. The artwork is a very interesting analysis of the 70 years long utopia that has wounded its population.  The requirements of the ideology, its mechanism and perception of future were so inadequate with the reality as the toy cars in the empty swimming pool. The feeling of confinement of the waterless pool is also noteworthy, the one so close to the claustrophobic environment of the Soviet Union. The artwork has an autobiographical touch. The painter sees himself as a Soviet kid and when thinking about heritage this period was the automatically the first thought. One of the children on the collage is the artist himself.

The mixed media (oil, canvas, watercolours and photo collage) paintings usually have Latin titles because of the multiple interpretations those words have. The kids facing the wall looking at the pictures of embryos stand in the middle of an ally in Egresus.  The sky, which is of a bloody transparent colour captures the eye immediately. Tato Akhalkatsishvili: ‘the closest definition is of banishing. It is a metaphor of the disrupted dialogue for me. This is the interrupted lives of the dead children for various reasons. These people are very interesting for me, how their lives would proceed, what they would do for this world. Any new life has a purpose when born then after developing to some point it attains some kind of skill, adding on to the experience of the humankind condensed in the unconscious. Suddenly the whole of generation got cropped and wiped out for various reasons- be it an abortion or war. I am curios what these people would do, how they would progress and what they would leave to this universe’. This reminds of the teenagers killed in the Abkhazian conflict, which had buried the potential of the whole generation and only left suppositions.

Uta Bekaia has separated the theme of heritage from his personal experiences and discussed it in a universal context; therefore, dividing it into three layers of physical, intellectual and spiritual memories he has created an installation. The physical heritage is the focal point of the installation; the white figure in white dress momentarily catches the eye in a half lit grey hall. The white clay figures on the floor transform into round shapes on the dress, which at the end becomes a human body; this seems like a physical demonstration of the human body formation. The whiteness helps the generalisation. It is intriguing to see the universal physical memory being personified in the female body. According to Uta the simple reality of having a female mannequin has stipulated this. However, for him the centre and the beginning of life is a woman, as the traditional symbol of lifecycle.

The intellectual heritage is a cupboard with multiple drawers, the strange shapes climb out of. These are the neurons of the artist, the ones that store the information and transport it through the whole organism. Every one of them is unique, never repeating each other. The plants standing over the box resemble the biological side of the artwork; the bindweeds get jumbled up so that it is difficult to separate a single branch, it resembles the mechanism of the human brain and the condensed information. The same clay forms are hanging on the sidewall. This is the material that the mind could not grasp and clasify into a box. ‘This is the information dried out in the air.’

Uta Bekaia: ‘I analyse myself as a medium carrying distinct amount of energy, to be released in the universe. Therefore, my art does not revolve around me personally; it is more visual and esoteric. I always avoid conceptualising my experiences in my art. My art is more ornamental. Heritage in its physiological sense is more fascinating for me. Circulation has always been very exciting for me and the information we carry- everything revolves around each other, then disappears and is reborn.’

Thespiritual heritage that according to the artist was very hard to materialise took a shape of anatomical heart and lava. ‘This is very abstract, no one can describe it, but for me it has a shape of a heart, it reminds of lava and the explosion’. The erupting volcanic lava is abstract before it spills and repeats the shape of the environment. The concept of a soul looks a lot like it; its abstract essence takes the shape of the body it is encased in. ‘The visual and aesthetic side is the most important for me and the natural shapes are my constant source of inspiration. Circulation is most captivating for me- when the organisms are born in nature, develop, deteriorate and takes new forms’- says Uta Bekaia.

Cristian Tonhaiser, based in Buenos-Aires, worked on the concept of heritage with the Georgian collective. Involving him in the exhibition seemed quite risky, because even though the others create dissimilar art, they still share a common ground and inspiration they come out of. However, the installation Nemesis has surprised the sceptics. Born in the family of emigrants, half Slovak and half Italian, Cristian sees the relevance of religion to his heritage as much as Georgians do. However, the ironical attitude is not so close to Georgians; as this was ridiculing of the catholic Christianity, Georgian audience took it quite casually. Nemesis means holy punishment for sins; the installation created on the theme is exhibited at the end of the exhibition space; the small, gloomy, grey walls suit the mood a lot. The central vitrine stores leftovers of bread and red wine, bringing the ritual of communion into the gallery space. The photos lit on the wall portray a man who is to eat the same bread and wine, then in the actual process of the ‘’holy communion’ a halo appears behind his head, the last picture captures the crop of his seemingly lifeless body. The punishment is one of the central themes of the Cristian religion and especially the Catholicism who has been through indulgence. The penance usually comes after death, when one goes to hell. However, Tonhaiser underlines the death as the actual punishment. ‘A person when sinning always knows he will be punished’ and so the man on the photograph, knowing he will be penalized prepares for the last communion. The self-irony is important for Cristian Tonhaiser so that he escapes this kind of heritage.