ARTBLOG: Georgian Female Artists. By Nino Biniashvili.

This Painting is by Eteri Chkadua

Eteri Chkadua, Late guest 2005

Eteri, who was born and raised in soviet Georgian based in New York since 1992, via Chicago, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Montréal and currently living in New York and Kingston, Jamaica, uses her many invented personate to create a construct of contemporary female identity, a container for social and cultural values that are ultimately Georgian, in dialogue with multiple perspectives and displacements that characterize many of today's peripatetic artists. Eteri, however, dresses her radiant, neo-dada babes in the painstaking, labor-intensive techniques of the old masters (she only completes three or four paintings a year) which includes the use of oil paint on a linen support, a brilliant palette and high-definition, mimetic skills worthy of a sixteen century Flemish artist, techniques acquired at the Georgian academy of fine arts. These are autobiographical works, even a travelogue of sort a semiotic of high and low tourism keyed to events in her as they unfold with flashbacks that recall and reinvent the country she has left, like Hollywood movie posters, with Caucasus slant. From the article "Picturing a Georgian artist as a New Amazon and Woman of the World"
by Lilly Wei, curator, essayist and critic / Art in America / ART news / Art Asia Pacific.

more: www.georgianfemaleartists.blogspot.com

On this Blog you can find more about this female artists from Georgia: Ilona Keil-Beruchashvili +++ Tamar Archvadze +++ Marina Ivanishvili +++ Eteri Chkadua +++ Elizabeth Epitashvili +++ Kiki Kakabadze +++ Tamar Bochorishvili

ART: Abkehr von der Ethnografie. Die Malerei von Eteri Chkadua erweitert die regionale Besonderheit.

Eteri Chkadua lebt, seit sie 1980 ihr Land verlassen hat, in den Vereinigten Staaten. Die Künstlerin bleibt den traditionellen künstlerischen Mitteln treu und bemalt ihre Leinwände mit Hilfe von Pinseln und Farbe mit großen realistischen Figuren, mit einem Stil, der mit vollen Händen aus der Erfahrung früherer Künstler schöpft, eine Methode, die sie während ihrer Studienzeit an der Akademie der Schönen Künste erlernt hat. Die reiselustige Künstlerin schafft eine Mischung aus den in New York, Jamaika, Miami, Georgien gesammelten Impressionen, und zeigt eine weibliche Welt aus der Sicht einer Frau: eine vielschichtige Form mit glatter Oberfläche, über die hinaus eine Impulsivität lesbar wird, die fast in den ursprünglichen Zustand eindringt und in der halluzinatorischen Wahrnehmung ihre Emotionen und ihren Elan anklingen lässt:

“Mein Frauenbild zeichnet sich gleichzeitig durch ethnische und mit der Pop Art, dem Tourismus, der Emigration zusammenhängende Elemente aus. Durch Annullierung von Geographie und Zeit wird das Bild universal”.

Quelle: ARSENALE / CAMPO DELLA TANA / Biennale venedig 2007

ART: MAGIC FEMINISM: The Georgian Artist Eteri Chkadua

by Ilka Scobie (artnet.com)

Eteri Chkadua, Sept. 11-Oct. 29, 2005, at Danny Simmons’ Corridor Gallery, 334 Grand Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11238

Paintings by Eteri Chkadua 1 2 3 4 5

Eteri Chkadua’s intense figurative paintings, currently on view at Danny Simmons’ Corridor Gallery in Brooklyn, are well worth a trip across the bridge. Simmons is, of course, an artist, author, collector and Fort Greene resident, and has established a nicely appointed gallery adjoining his living space, which is in itself a mini-museum of African tribal art and African American art and photography.

Full Text: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/scobie/scobie10-26-05.asp

ART: Georgian Pavilion at the 52 Venice Biennale.

Thanks to Sophia Tabatadze

Georgian Pavilion at the 52 Venice Biennale

VENICE BIENNALE info.pdf

PRESS CONFERENCE: SATURDAY 9th JUNE 2007 FROM 10.00 TO 10.30 AM, TEATRO PICCOLO – ARSENALE, Calle della Tana 2168/B
INAUGURATION: SATURDAY 9th JUNE 2007 AT 12.00 PM
PRESS PREVIEW: 6-7-8-9 June 2007 - Opening hours: 10.00 am – 8.00 pm
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: 10thJune - 21st November 2007 - Opening hours: 10.00 am – 6.00 pm (closed on Tuesdays)
VENUE: Arsenale, Campo della Tana, Castello 2126/A
ORGANISER: Ministry of Culture, Monument Protection and Sport of Georgia - www.georgianseason.ge
ORGANISER IN VENICE: Arte Communications - www.artecommunications.com
CURATORS: Nino Tchogoshvili, Tamara Lortkifanidze
COMMISSIONERS: Paolo De Grandis, Manana Muskhelishvili, Zviad Mchedlishvili
ARTISTS: Eteri Chkadua, Tamara Kvesitadze with co-authors Paata Sanaia and Zura Gugulashvili, Sophia Tabatadze

The Georgian pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition in Venice presents projects and works which appear largely different from each other. It is not only artistic taste and world outlook that distinguishes the featured artists, but also a range of modern and traditional means and media they use in their works. The art of Georgia, a country located on the border between Europe and Asia, and at the cross-roads of occidental and oriental cultures, has always been remarkable for its diversity and originality. Rooted in local traditions, Georgian art has also benefited at different times from a range of foreign, namely west European, Byzantine, oriental, avant-garde and social- realistic styles and movements. Georgian fine art of the 20th century was closely linked to the political and social processes unfolding in the country. In the first quarter of the 20th century, Georgian art developed in line with contemporary avant-garde trends and styles. Moreover, several Georgian artists worked with celebrated avant-garde artists in the world’s art centers of the time. Following World War I, a large number of renowned modernist artists from Russia headed for Tbilisi. The city thus turned into a hub of modernism. However, the isolation from the western world, as well as censorship and repression practiced by the Soviet regime, defined the specific nature of the trend along which Georgian culture had to develop. The late 20th century, characterized by political transformations and opening of borders, provided opportunities for renewed cultural exchange and cooperation. However, this process, which is still underway, is also associated with difficulties. Contemporary Georgian art is trying to establish itself on the world map of art. The Georgian artistic community has certainly become much more ‘open’ than it has been in previous decades. Globalization and mobility have enabled more intense connections with the western world. It is notable that current national cultural policy pays increased attention to the promotion of contemporary Georgian art. Analysis of the past, revision of values, search for and adoption of new forms and media, frequent instances of blind imitation, along with the desire to maintain local values, traditions and aesthetics and build contemporary art on these premises are evident. The venue in which Georgian art has been developing is right in the centre of the Caucasus region, in which a large number of nations and ethnic groups with ancient cultures have co-existed throughout the millennia.
The political and social situation in the region is complex and tense. Contemporary artists naturally respond differently to the social, political and cultural processes unfolding in their country, each depicting the aspect most vulnerable to him or her. The works represented at the exhibition are reflective only as part of the creative processes taking place in contemporary Georgian art.

Eteri Chkadua has been living in the US since 1980, when she left Georgia. The artist remains faithful to traditional artistic means, painting her medium and large realistic figures on canvas by using brush and paints in a manner which largely relies on the experience of a generation of earlier artists and which was taught to her at the Georgian Academy of Fine Arts. Eteri Chkadua, who is keen on traveling, creates a hybrid of New-York, Jamaican, Miami and Georgian impressions. She portrays a woman’s world as seen by a woman – a multi-layered form with a polished surface beyond which one can read impulsiveness almost bordering with the primitive state. Hallucinatory perception echoes her emotions and impulses.
‘My image of a woman is simultaneously characterized by ethnical, pop-art, tourism and emigrant related elements. It has become universal as I made geography and time vanish’.

The RE-TURN project by Tamara Kvesitadze, with co-authors Paata Sanaia and Zura Gugulashvili, is composed of one installation and several mechanical figures. The materials used are fiberglass, metal and mechanisms. The mechanical figures represent the process of transformation in movement, which finds reflection on the surroundings they are placed in. The concept of the work is based on the correlation between the mechanical and organic.

‘Mechanical vs. organic
Organic nature of the mechanical 􀃆 orderliness of the organic 􀃆 mechanical nature of the orderliness’.
Sophia Tabatadze portrays the state of a human being with the use of architectural forms. Her interpretation of architecture goes beyond the primary meaning of the word. In her project titled ‘Humancon Undercon’, Tabatadze shows human traces in an urban environment that has become thoroughly inhuman. To underline this imbalance, she emphasizes certain details, leaving others uncompleted. She aims to show our inability to perceive things in their totality - a totality that includes space and time. It is this inability that lies behind our present condition of constant amnesia, in which we choose to overlook certain aspects of our collective past.
‘My work draws on the urban environment and the things that happen in it. In order to bring these happenings close to myself I process them through my own body by physically making work about it. By doing so I try to accept my surroundings in the period when their aesthetics and directions do not match with mine’.

INFORMATION:
ARTE COMMUNICATIONS
Tel: (39) 041. 526 4546 Fax: (39) 041. 276 9056
E-mail: info@artecommunications.com
pressoffice@artecommunications.com

Web site: www.artecommunications.com

Project: Humancon Undercon

Press: http://www.artecommunications.com/upload/GEORGIA_PRESS%20RELEASE_18apr07.pdf

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Upcoming Events
*June 10 to November 21 - ‘Humancon Undercon’ Georgian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Italy
*May 26 onwards - ‘Let’s Drink to Love’ – video work at the exhibition ‘Progressive Nostalgia’ in ‘Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art’, Prato, Italy
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Source: http://sophiatabatadze.blogspot.com/

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