PHOTOGRAPHY: Journalist Anna Chichinadze presented some of her Georgian Photographies

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ART: The Artist David Gabriël Djindjikhachvili (davidgabriel.nl)

David Gabriël Djindjikhachvili is born in Georgia in the year 1975. He grows up and completes grammar school in Tbilisi during the intense period of political and socia changes. Being raised in an artistic family he develops from the youngest age the sculpting, drawing, and painting skills.

In 1995 he starts the studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where his artistic work acquires a new direction. During this time he develops a strong interest in filmmaking, graduating in 1999 from the Audiovisual Department. In the postgraduate Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam he deepens the conceptual and practical understanding of the moving image still further graduating in 2001.

In his artistic practice up to date he is not daunted by the scale or nature of the projects, and is thus always finding ways of unique artistic expression by taking charge of the projects and imposing his own ideas and standards on the film and photography. He lives and works in Amsterdam.

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Artist brings together reality and aesthetics (Georgia Today) by Anna Chichinadze

EXHIBITION: Georgia through the lens of Magnum photographers. By Anna Chichinadze. (georgiatoday.ge)

Georgia through the lens of Magnum photographers
Print version

Starting Sept. 5, Berlin will host the presentation of a newly published book about Georgia.

"Georgian Spring" is the name of a photo album in which 10 Magnum photographers collaborated over their three-month stay in the country. The Culture Ministry initiated the project to “demonstrate Georgia as a European country,” according to Culture Minister Nikoloz Rurua.
Rurua said he gave full freedom to the photographers to decide how to depict Georgia.
“Honesty is the main value of the book,” Rurua told Georgia Today. Indeed, the album is too realistic to serve as a traditional tourist book.
Beautiful postcards depicting typical sightseeing photos of the country are used only as the opening and closing details of the book.
Thomas Dworzak, one of the Magnum photographers who also wrote the forward for “Georgian Springs,” said the book portrays a new, contemporary image of Georgia after the Soviet Union crackdown.
“I think the book will raise awareness of Georgia,” Dworzak told Georgia Today. “European society has stereotypes toward the country, they know nothing about contemporary Georgia, but those old-fashioned pictures and images, churches, funerals, all those photographs have already been photographed and that was biggest attraction for all of us for some time.”
Dworzak said he has a 17-year-old “love-story” with Georgia that started in the early 1990s. He worked in the first Georgian-Abkhazian conflict and lived in Georgia for six years. Today he said he notices numerous changes in the country and thinks the new reality should be delivered to the international community.
Together with Dworzak, Jonas Bendiksen, Antoine D’Agata, Martine Franck, Alex Majoli, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Mark Power and Alec Soth worked on the 264 page travel journal. Each photographer was responsible for 20 pages of the book, which includes photographs and texts that each photographer wrote about their works and journey within Georgia.
Wendell Steavenson, a journalist and writer, also wrote about her own experience of living and working in Georgia. Chris Boot, a well-known photo publisher, coordinated and organized the project.
Each of the photographers chose their field of interest. New generation, luxury, consumer and gambling, family portraits, construction and industry, minorities and other angles of ordinary Georgian life are showcased in the album together with photos from Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The album is realistic. The pictures capture ugly Soviet blocks and suburbs and women in the markets and streets who do not look happy or comfortable. The modest feasts in ordinary families look too vital among the everyday routine of sadness.
The texts under the photos, which are written in a diary-like manner, express the bare feelings of the photographers. D’agata worked on the Industry and the Economy section of the book and after visiting Kutaisi he wrote about what he saw.
“In Kutaisi, I photographed the renovation of the old town. To be fair, it was not finished and some businesses had moved back in, but the face felt like an enormous film set, strangely soulless and phoney,” he wrote. “Meanwhile on the other side of the town, the municipal market was dominated by huge (and astonishingly beautiful) Soviet frieze, which was crumbling in disrepair.”
President Mikheil Saakashvili is also featured in the book. Dworzak decided to take photographs of the president that are a mix of official visits and some unofficial moments caught in various circumstances, like sitting at the UN assembly listening to world leaders.
“He liked the idea and helped me a lot,” Dworzak said. “He even gave me a chance to enter places I was not allowed. When other photographers stayed behind the closed doors he managed to take me inside.”
The last section of the book is reserved for the Magnum Agency archive. Among other photographs it consists of Robert Capa’s photo essay, which he made during his visit to the Soviet Union and Georgia together with John Steinbeck in 1947. There are also photos by the famous photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Saakashvili was the first to promote the book when he publicly presented it to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden during his visit to Georgia in July.
Soon after its tour through Germany the book will be showcased in Spain and be on sale across the globe. To date, the book has been published in many languages including Georgian, English, Spanish, German and French.

source: georgiatoday.ge




photos by Ralph Hälbig

ARTICLE: ‘Kiss to Summer’ by Maka Batiashvili. By Anna Chichinadze. (georgiatoday.ge)

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Georgian painter Maka Batiashvili decided to express gratitude to sunny July by holding her “Kiss to Summer” exhibit of about 40 pieces from July 17 until late August at the Art-Lavka exhibit hall in Tbilisi.

The exhibit was organized by Ketato Charkviani, wife of the late Georgian singer Irakli Charkviani. Batiashivili was the first artist to have her work displayed in the new space, but Charkviani hopes to host other modern art exhibits there in the future.

“It is just a gathering of the works I have in Tbilisi,” Batiashvili said at the opening. “Some of them were even painted a couple days ago.”

The main features of her work are the moods and emotions of people shown through unshaped figures with flat, almost homogeneous faces with slightly traced features, leaving the impression that the feelings are on the surface and the figures are part of the background.

The oil work “Decision” depicts two women sitting at a table, about to make a decision, who seem to have indifferent faces, but their horizontally stretched lips and crossed fingers express tension, while their button-like eyes suggest a feeling of hope. This hope is significant to all of Batiashvili’s people. They all are sad, strained and sometimes seem to be grieving from loneliness, but a glimpse of hope is always there in their black, dot-like eyes.

Colors that the artist used are a contrast of pastels and darks. She used khaki, brown, mat blue, yellow and green, and the pictures almost always have unexpected angles.

“I want to change something in my style,” she said. “I am in need of new inspirations and new shapes. I am stuck in this particular way of painting.” Earlier works are comprised more of bright and intensive colors.

Though her main interest is pictorial arts, she experiments in almost every genre. Batiashvili works in installations, video art, photography and graphic design. In the last two years, she also discovered ink.

“Technically it is very easy to draw with ink, but I put a huge effort to show emotions I want to express,” she said. “This is the main challenge in graphics.” Shapes of graphical people are like the paintings and are as a kind of new, minimalism interpretation of the canvases.

The big screen on the terrace shows an animation film based on the artist’s works. Night time is the right time to see the film on outdoor screen.

Almost all Batiashvili’s works are exhibited in Lithuania, but since April 9, the collection has traveled from town to town around Georgia. The idea to exhibit modern Georgian artist in Lithuania came after Pirosmani’s successful exposition in Vilnius.

Batiashvili’s work will be on display until February 2010.

“I cannot find the reason, but Lithuanians often talk about similarities between me and Pirosmani, which annoys me a lot,” she said, but is pleased that her works gained such success in the Baltic state.

Art-Lavka
8 Sioni St.
July 17 to late August

EXHIBITION: New Medea art brings artists together (georgiatoday.ge)

The second part will start on 26. august until 26. septembre in the "Künstlerhaus Saarbrücken". The title would be there "Tiflis Transfer". Aditional there would are an art-blog with the same title to the art and to the capital of Georgia - Tbilisi. Arround the 22. August you can find more here in this blog.

Print version (georgiatoday.ge)
By Anna Chichinadze 10.07.2009

The New Medea Theater Collective launched recently a contemporary art project, whose name alludes to mythology and the reason behind the initiative.
German artist Patricia London Ante Paris, creator and the curator of the project, was disturbed with the distance between artists abroad and in post-Soviet countries. She found it difficult to “reach” Europe for many reasons, with visas topping the list.
Patricia gathered the collective of Georgian artists because she said, “We claim to be democratic countries, but we do not even have the freedom of travel.”
Concerned with this issue, she decided to gather her colleagues to participate in one project.
The first show was held at Tbilisi’s New Art Cafe. The collection will travel to Kuenstlerhaus, Saarbrucken, Germany, in August.
The project is built around the story of the legendary “Golden Fleece.” According to Georgian and Greek legends, Jason and his band of Argonauts arrive to the Kingdom of Colchis — today’s Kolkheti in western Georgia — to find the fleece. Princess Medea helps Jason capture the fleece and later escapes with him. Patricia altered the story as if Jason arrived to the region in search of oil, and Medea promised to help him if he would take the princess and her artist friends abroad.
The exhibition includes all genres of new media, such as video, photography, computer graphics, drawing and mixed techniques.
Sofi Babluani, 22, used a mixed technique to show a woman, Media-Medea Magnate, with a ram in her neck and an oil well in the background. Anthea Nicholson drew two human heads over hills, defining their being as a mix of energy, love and oil. Georgian composer Natia Sartania, also known as “Stia,” provided a rather standard, photographed self-portrait shot in a car mirror, which supposedly reveals the Medea’s feminine nature.
Four videos were also exhibited. In one video, two men in black, motley suits made of paper wave their hands back and forth violently, which expresses confusion over the direction in which oil is flowing.
If one listens with closed eyes Stia’s musical accompaniment creates an ancient atmosphere.
However, the video recalls something more modern and less artistic, perhaps because contemporary art is a tight circle. The collective’s artwork was designed to be small, so it could easily bring the works to Germany, hoping the authors will also follow.
“When the works are exhibited, the artists should be there as well,” painter Nino Chipashvili said. “Otherwise the event will pass without reason. To go further in your work, you need contact, changing ideas and emotions. Offers for future collaborations only come after engaging in personal relations with people in the same space where you show your art.”
“London Ante Paris” is Patricia’s alias which she created for her thesis when graduating from the Munich Arts Academy. She took a new surname, presented as a diploma work, and received an excellent evaluation.
“I like when you cannot read one’s nation, class or race because of a name,” Patricia said, expressing her wish for no boundaries for artists around the world.

ARTICLE: Knolevi – Village of Constant Stress. By Anna Chichinadze (annachichinadze.blogspot.com)

We won’t be responsible if anything happens to you there, we recommend staying and seeing the rest of the village,” said Georgian soldiers to an International Rescue Committee representative, who was attempting to cross the conditional line dividing the village Knolevi into two parts – the buffer zone and another smaller district known as the hot zone. The two border a line on a road, including a piece of inhabited ground that separates Georgian and Ossetian checkpoints from each other.

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PHOTOBLOG: The photographer Alexander Bagration-Davidoff has got a nice blog with his work (bagrationi.wordpress.com)

Some days ago I had a nice time in the NEW ART CAFÉ from Rusiko Oat. I met there my friends Anni Chichinadze from Georgia Today and the young guy Alexander Bagrationi. With Alexander I spoke about the photography in Georgia. Some hours before this meeting he contacted me in facebook and sent it me his Photoblog. His last posted works are from the village is called “sun of suns”, in georgian “Mzetamze”. Another posted series was realized a year ago, somewhere in svanetian mountains, in upper abkhazia, which’s also called Dali’s Gorge. He likes the combination of dangerous, emotionful situations in the metaphor of georgian landscape. Aditional I asked him it is possible to meet Thomas Dvorzak. He said me that he is a good friend of him. But at the time we couldn't meet this photographer from MAGNUM AGENCY. He is at the time in Chechnya for photographing. Here you can see some photos from Alexander Bagrationi on his blog: bagrationi.wordpress.com

ARTICLE: Hans Heiner Buhr in: Geoprgia Today (georgiatoday.ge)

Romantic German Painter From Sayatnova Street
Contemporary Art Mixed by Hans Heiner Buhr

ART: Romantic German Painter From Sayatnova Street. Contemporary Art Mixed by Hans Heiner Buhr. (georgiatoday.ge)

I was very glad to read an article about my friend Hans Heiner Buhr in "Georgia Today". Almost 7 years I know him. He is german but I have known him in Georgia. And every time when I was there I met him and spent time with him together. It is amazing to have a german friend in the foreign space. Only there I had contact with him and we changed informations.

Paintings by Hans Heiner Buhr >>>

Also one of my favourite paintings is the "Mother of Georgia". And in the article I could read about this painting.

The first Painting he shows is “Mother of Georgia” from his earlier works. He laughs a lot when remembers the first reaction of the Georgian who saw it on the exhibit. He shows me the real “Mother of Georgia” from the window of the studio “Are they alike?” he asks. It’s impossible to keep off laughing. Actually the painting shows an old woman sitting in the chair and two beardy men with guns are standing on the background of her. Their faces are stern, ruthless and they look like robbers. It is exactly what the painter wanted to express. It was Georgia perceived from his eye – eyes of a German man who came from Europe and find out a world of his childhood dreams. “All my childhood I played in robbery and pretended to be a thief or robber who lives wildly in the mountains and my dreams almost came true, I’d never imagine it,” remembers Buhr his first impressions about Georgia that actually last long, until this days.

And until today we have contact through the internet. Heiner is a strong blogger. I mean he found the blog activities from there. I guess he was the first blogger from Georgia. Now he is also the owner of the blog from "Art Club Caucasus".

“I stayed here and didn’t know what to do. I wanted to promote myself as an artist, because I was completely apart from Berlin and galleries, cultural life and I didn’t know what was going on there. Then I came across to blogs and I understood that it was a great thing to promote my art. I realized that blog was better than just web-site, and launched my blog.”

He is very fond of internet. He does most of his works using internet and is a great promoter of it.

“Internet is a kind of medium bringing together all Caucasian artists. Caucasus and Georgia had no lobby for a long time, nobody was interested in this country, but there are really good artists here, and foreign artist got interested what’s going on here, in Caucasian phenomena, its romantic character. There came an idea to create art club Caucasus, where we have gathered different artists from all over the world, including Georgian artists living abroad. That is not just only bringing them together but promotes them, we have their works on the site and viewer can see and buy them or contact with authors,“ Buhr says. The blog artclubcaucasus.blogspot.com is the place of one big gathering of the artists from Caucasus and people fond of the region with different styles, tastes and ways of expression.

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By Anna Chichinadze (17.04.2009)