Exhibition venue: Vere Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia
13.12.2023 - 18.12.2023
Curated by Mariam Mikadze and Kato Karselishvili
Objects possess a unique property – they retain memories, histories, energies, and speak to us of people, crafting our existential dimensions. They enable us to project the vectors and aesthetics of an era. Our ability to “listen” to these objects, “read” them, and allow them into our emotional strata, beckons us to regard with special interest the genre of fine art known as still life. This genre is intimately connected to the world of objects. The essence of still life is to represent an object as a testament to human existence. Its multi-layered approach transforms tales, stories, and eras into artistic forms rich with symbols and allusive nuances. These were the realms of thought underpinning the fundamental concept of this exhibition.
The exhibition endeavored to articulate, through the language of still life, a segment of the history of Georgian painting from the second half of the twentieth century, contextualized within the frameworks and relationships of this period. This narrative gained particular intrigue from the artists chosen and united for this showcase. Despite the constraints of Soviet art ideology – in terms of artistic language and thematic selection – their artistic intuition drew them towards the genre of still life. The exhibition aimed, on one hand, to unveil still life as a concept in relation to the era, and on the other, to commemorate those creators who, even if only in fragments, resurrect for us an alternative panoramic view and the artistic processes that occurred in parallel to the mainstream trajectory of Georgian painting evolution.