An interesting and thought-provoking art exhibition is currently on view in Berlin at 68 Projects. Rooms & Beings is the first solo of Georgian artist, Rusudan Khizanishvili in Germany curated by New York-based curator Nina Mdivani is on view through January 9, 2021. Khizanishvili balances between Georgian culture, so rich in traditions, and the conceptually driven contemporary discourse on representation and its functions. The fourteen works on view were all created in 2020 while the artist was living in Tbilisi, and can be thematically divided into two categories: works centred around sacral transformations, and those featuring theatrically staged interactions within rooms. These two themes are implicitly interconnected for the artist, as the human being and her identity are of central interest. Questions of self, connections to biology, cultural memory and myths, and the female body are all the subjects of an ongoing investigation for Khizanishvili, who shows maturity of purpose and mastery of colour.
Photos courtesy of 68 Projects and Gerhard Haug
Khizanishvili’s paintings go against the grain of constructed identity as expected from a post-Soviet artist. By creating a powerful and unique visual vocabulary, she remains only loosely connected to the preoccupations of post-colonialism, addressing them in more abstract terms, rather than aspects of mastery and subjugation. The roles and strength of women are recurring themes in her work, with her canvases featuring archetypal heroines, constantly transforming themselves. According to hereditary mathematics, every human being now alive has received the genetic information of more than 4,000 ancestors. We carry within ourselves such an immense amount of cellular information that our brain cannot possibly process it. In response, our bodies begin to develop and reinforce additional senses, creating new personas, animals, trees, oceans, and tsunamis. Although we might be physically stuck in rooms for now, within us we create brand new worlds, build aqueducts, bridges and highways, we travel far away and return from other dimensions.
Photos courtesy of 68 Projects and Gerhard Haug
Rusudan Khizanishvili (1979) lives and paints in Tbilisi, Georgia. She has received her two BFAs in Painting from J.Nikoladze Art School and from Tbilisi State Academy of Art. In 2004 Rusudan received her MA in Film Studies from Tbilisi State Academy of Art. Over the past fifteen years Khizanishvili has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions including Museum of Modern Art Tbilisi, Museum of Literature of Georgia, Tbilisi State Silk Museum, Mark Rothko Foundation, Daugavapils, Latvia, Galerie Am Roten Hof, Vienna, Austria, Arundel Contemporary, Arundel, UK, New Image Art Gallery, Santa Monica, USA; Kunstverein Villa Wessel Iserlohn, Germany; Norty Paris, Triumph Gallery, Moscow, Assembly Room, New York, USA, Window Project, Tbilisi. In 2015 Khizanishvili represented Georgia among five other artists at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. Her works are presented in the collection of the Georgian National Museum; private collection of Stefan Simchowitz, LA; Breus Foundation, Moscow.
Photos courtesy of 68 Projects and Gerhard Haug
This exhibition has been selected among twelve other current presentations as a must-see show in Berlin by Artcollected in December 2020. Visit the exhibition until january 9, 2021 and find out more info on https://www.68projects.com
Written by Nina Mdivani
