Thea Djordjadze
November
16 Feb - 31 Mar 2013
Thea Djordjadze, November, exhibition view, Kölnischer Kunstverein, 2013, Courtesy Galerie Sprüth Magers, photo: Albrecht Fuchs
Thea Djordjadze was born in 1971 in Tbilisi, Georgia. She studied sculpture in the class of Rosemarie Trockel at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. From 2004 to 2007 she was a studio scholarship holder of the Kœlnischer Kunstverein. Now the Kunstverein presents her first institutional solo exhibition in Germany since 5 years. As is often the case at the Kunstverein, it is a specific new production that is unmistakable and arises in direct confrontation with the location.
A recurring element of many of Thea Djordjadze’s works are slender wooden or steel profile constructions. The struts, which change direction and length several times, are reminiscent of axonometric drawings. They are geometric figures whose straight lines and angles have been broken up and twisted. Their contours suggest unfinished surfaces and volumes. Sometimes they give the impression of strangely folded outlines of various furnishings. The structures work in combination with objects made of wood, clay, papier-mâché and other materials. In addition, there are carpets or pieces of carpet, glass panes or cut-to-size panels. The fragments are connected by loose procedures such as placing, laying and leaning. They are speculative, temporary arrangements. Their painting seems to be provisional. For example, when thinly mixed plaster or undiluted wall paint is applied to soft material such as foam or carpet.
Djordjadze’s sculptures are partly reminiscent of the spatial folds of the Russian Futurists or the De Stijl Group, but again they are clearly distinguished from them by biomorphic, sometimes surreal, sometimes folkloristic-looking design elements. Added to this is an almost narrative approach to the interior as a motif: chair, table, bed, screen. The artist perceives the visual starting material for her ensembles in the design and architecture of the environments she travels through or uses. The family context in Georgia and her travel activities as an internationally exhibited artist living in Berlin provide the topographical coordinates of this reception. It is heterogeneous spatial concepts whose experience interests the artist. Situations in which use, improvisation and the clash of diverse, often contradictory cultural practices play a role. Djordjadze transplants images and objects out of the context of their original function and appearance and transfers them into the speculative environment of her own artistic work. Cultural reality and contradictions – which are represented as normality in the source material – are dissolved and renegotiated in this process.
Modernism appears in Thea Djordjadze’s work as a construction whose universalistic claim has always been relativized by the plurality of cultural and geographical exchange relationships. On the occasion of her exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel (2009), the artist showed the film “The Salt of Swanetia” by Mikhail Kalatosov in a cinema. The film documents the clash of modernization and archaic in the post-revolutionary Soviet Republic of Georgia. Soviet filmmakers wanted to bring the socialist perspective – also in terms of visual language – to the southern edges of the young soviet republic, which were marked by patriarchal traditions. Conversely, however, the film language of the young revolutionaries was also changed by the existing social and geographical structures. A similar relationship is reflected in Djordjadze’s work when she lays a folkloristic fringed carpet over an axonometric wooden construction. The ornamentation of the carpet is also relativized. The ornamental side of the carpet is folded inwards; the unintentionally modern-looking back, which is mechanistic due to the manufacturing process, remains visible.
Søren Grammel, Curator of the exhibition
A recurring element of many of Thea Djordjadze’s works are slender wooden or steel profile constructions. The struts, which change direction and length several times, are reminiscent of axonometric drawings. They are geometric figures whose straight lines and angles have been broken up and twisted. Their contours suggest unfinished surfaces and volumes. Sometimes they give the impression of strangely folded outlines of various furnishings. The structures work in combination with objects made of wood, clay, papier-mâché and other materials. In addition, there are carpets or pieces of carpet, glass panes or cut-to-size panels. The fragments are connected by loose procedures such as placing, laying and leaning. They are speculative, temporary arrangements. Their painting seems to be provisional. For example, when thinly mixed plaster or undiluted wall paint is applied to soft material such as foam or carpet.
Djordjadze’s sculptures are partly reminiscent of the spatial folds of the Russian Futurists or the De Stijl Group, but again they are clearly distinguished from them by biomorphic, sometimes surreal, sometimes folkloristic-looking design elements. Added to this is an almost narrative approach to the interior as a motif: chair, table, bed, screen. The artist perceives the visual starting material for her ensembles in the design and architecture of the environments she travels through or uses. The family context in Georgia and her travel activities as an internationally exhibited artist living in Berlin provide the topographical coordinates of this reception. It is heterogeneous spatial concepts whose experience interests the artist. Situations in which use, improvisation and the clash of diverse, often contradictory cultural practices play a role. Djordjadze transplants images and objects out of the context of their original function and appearance and transfers them into the speculative environment of her own artistic work. Cultural reality and contradictions – which are represented as normality in the source material – are dissolved and renegotiated in this process.
Modernism appears in Thea Djordjadze’s work as a construction whose universalistic claim has always been relativized by the plurality of cultural and geographical exchange relationships. On the occasion of her exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel (2009), the artist showed the film “The Salt of Swanetia” by Mikhail Kalatosov in a cinema. The film documents the clash of modernization and archaic in the post-revolutionary Soviet Republic of Georgia. Soviet filmmakers wanted to bring the socialist perspective – also in terms of visual language – to the southern edges of the young soviet republic, which were marked by patriarchal traditions. Conversely, however, the film language of the young revolutionaries was also changed by the existing social and geographical structures. A similar relationship is reflected in Djordjadze’s work when she lays a folkloristic fringed carpet over an axonometric wooden construction. The ornamentation of the carpet is also relativized. The ornamental side of the carpet is folded inwards; the unintentionally modern-looking back, which is mechanistic due to the manufacturing process, remains visible.
Søren Grammel, Curator of the exhibition