Tamara Kvesitadze or the Triumph of Ambivalence
Art Palace of Georgia presents the creativity of outstanding Georgian architect, sculptor and painter
By Art Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Art Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
TAMARA KVESITADZE
At the age of five she already loved Vermeer and Giacometti, at the age of eight she painted watercolours like an old master, later she created set designs, costumes, dolls and kinetic sculptures...
FROM ANCIENT CULTURE AND MYTHOLOGY TO SURREALISM
Movement is an important feature in her creativity. She creates works that successfully combine art and construction. Yet her primary concern was not the representation of movement using the resources of contemporary sculpture; her interest in movement is far more comprehensive. She was always interested in Greek philosophy and especially the aphorisms of Heraclitus. “According to him, everything is in flux and one can never enter the same river twice, as it is in constant motion. Given that sculpture is not typically linked to movement, I became more and more interested in experimenting with this idea in my practice.”- she says.
Egg (2007) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Her ambivalence stems from a sensuality always close to tragedy, from a tension between interior commotion and lusty hedonism.
Egg (2007) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
This story shows a strong affirmation of her complex identity, of the new strength that she now gains from painting, and of the eternal force of her sculptures...
Red (2013) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
... her art revolves around the contrast between the organic and the mechanic, the warmth of flesh and coolness of metal, and the cycle of rebirth...
Red (2013) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Shock and beauty, fascination and disturbance are true emblems of her creativity.
Red (2013) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
SHE IS ...
A sculptor in the best modern meaning of the word she is an independent Georgian artist who is creating her own outstanding world. The secret of her success lies in her uncompromised creativity and strong judgment. An architect by education, she started to make dolls in Tbilisi to make a living in the turbulent 1990s. She then left for the United States, where her work attracted the interest of art dealers and galleries. She clearly grasped the business of making unique dolls for collections and challenged elaborate Western technologies with individual methods of high artistic creativity.
STAGE FOR DOLLS
In childhood she had discovered an old French doll in a drawer of her grandma and many years later the recollections of her childhood were reflected in the stylized, porcelain baby faces of her own dolls. Practical considerations prompted her at that time to create miniature features – it was much easier to remove a tiny head from the cast.
Wheel of a Fate (2007) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Each Tamar Kvesitadze's doll was a microcosm of a whole world of childhood reminiscences. For six years, she created, exhibited and sold her dolls. Then she bid farewell to this sentimental genre.
Wheel of a Fate (2007) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Wheel of a Fate (2007) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Fatty (2015) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Fatty (2015) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
The Queen (2015) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Man in a Fish (2004) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
TAMARASTUDIO
Years passed and she began mulling over deeper modern sculptural shapes and their dynamics, plasticity. At that very time she met Paata Sanaia - soon to become her artistic partner and now responsible for creating the complex mechanisms for her kinetic sculptures.
In 2000, together with Paata Sanaia, she founded TamaraStudio, a workshop in which she creates her art and which cooperates with various exhibition halls and large companies that produce limited series of her artistic works.
ARTIST - THINKER
Never repeating herself Tamara gives endless imaginative opportunities to all viewers. Constantly expanding and ascending her artistic vision Tamara’s creations have considerable depth and uniqueness. As a strong-willed protagonist she stepped up to deliver her message to the world and she will not, cannot stop until she brings her message to its intended audience. She is a born artist-thinker, and cannot be otherwise. Her credentials as an artist of note were assured through her participation in the VENICE BIENNALE, both in 2007 and in 2011.
VENICE BIENNALE
Tamara has had the honour of representing her country at the 2011 54th Venice Biennale, where her kinetic sculptures instantly heralded her as an artist of high note by critics and the public alike. By telling a story of changing identity and permanent community - one of a continuous and desperate fight against uniformity - kinetic sculpture "Sphere" - was much celebrated then and afterwords.“The dynamic reality of processes of mutation and transformation, of human beings as the ‘builders of spheres"- wrote then Henk Slager.
Sphere by Tamara Kvesitadze Georgia 54th La Biennale di Venezia 2011Art Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Man and Woman (2012) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
What Tamara wants to say artistically, she usually says with the human form. Sculpture "MAN and WOMAN" is an interpenetration of two bodies, masculine and feminine. It is a never-ending story of love and separation, of joy and of sadness, of pleasure and suffering. One must go back to the Bible (“and they become one flesh”). One must go back to one’s birth, to one’s first love and one’s first separation.
Today, the exact copy of the sculpture is preserved in the Art Palace of Georgia.
Man&WomanArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
The most famous piece ‘Man and Woman’ is now standing nine meters tall against the sky over the Black Sea.
Atlas (2007) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
The figure of "Atlas", firmly seated on the ground looks up towards the sky, and as slowly and calmly as breath begins to move. Bands circling his body separate as he stretches up into the air, as if to reach for eternal enlightenment.
Atlas (2007) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
As "Atlas" quietly and endlessly moves up to the sky and down again to the Earth, a mingling of the forces of good and evil remains in perpetual balance, because within one must always reside the other, only then are we whole.
Rotation (2008) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Last Supper Last SupperArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
1/8 of a Woman 1/8 of a WomanArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Female body has always been very present in Tamara's work, but it has rarely been a peaceful representation of quiet women; below the surface there is almost always a form of ambivalence, nonconformism...
1/8 of a Woman view of front side (2006) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
like here, in "1/8 of a Woman"
1/8 of a Woman view of back side (2006) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Revolving Woman (2003) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Tamara Kvesitadze - Bienal de VeneciaArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Reptilia (2013) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
GALERIE KORNFELD
From 2013 Tamara started to collaborate with Galerie Kornfeld,
which by representing a combination of emerging and established artists is
committed to contributing to a contemporary discourse. Gallery’s space is dedicated to a diverse
curatorial exhibition programs and offers residencies for international artists
throughout the year. Within the collaboration Tamara exhibited kinetic
sculptures, sculptures, paintings and watercolors. On the occasion of the first solo show by Tamara Kvesitadze in
Germany, Galerie Kornfeld published a catalogue with texts by Susanne
Altmann, specialist for Eastern European art and writer for the German magazine
ART, and French scholar, critic and writer Marc Lenot. Evaluations of these
authors for Tamara's works are being used in this exhibit.
"Reptilia" was first shown at Gallerie Kornfeld.
A sculpture made of fragments, spine on which rotate twenty-five metal skeletons, twenty-five classic and blank faces. This is a sculpture of fragments, pieces combined to form a whole, a monument of unity and of diversity, of permanent metamorphosis and of constant struggle against standardization.
Any Direction (2017) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
The wall entitled "Any Direction" creates cinematic movement in an extremely simple fashion: against the backdrop of figurative watercolors, showing a wide spectrum of human gestures, actions and fantastical creatures, a wall of plywood is placed in close proximity, with holes that follow the outlines of the painted figures...
Any Direction (2017) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
... walking along the wall, the creatures behind it change with each new perspective and each change of light and thus seem animated. Kvesitadze thereby creates a film, a miniature world theater, which at the same time is an ironic commentary on human comedy and tragedy, staged by the exhibition as a whole.
Cave Tellers (2017) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Cave Tellers (2017) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Ne Me Quitte Pas Ne Me Quitte PasArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Combining surprise and discovery, all her sculptures, kinetic or static, follow a clear path which the artist may not have thought of during the process of creation, but which naturally feeds her plastic vocabulary...
... like in this work, entitled "Ne Me Quitte Pas".
Me and You Me and YouArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
"ME and YOU"
The work celebrates the return of Tamara Kvesitadze to painting (2013), not that she had stopped using the brush, but she had not shown any painting for a long time, concentrating on her elaborate sculptures during these last years.
Ancient I (2013) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Ancient II (2013) by Tamara KvesitadzeArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
LIAISON OF BEAUTY AND SHOCK
Tamara’s figures show broken, skewed, amputated, fragmented bodies and thus present a paradoxical liaison of beauty and shock. In contrast to the torsos of antiquity, which always convey a notion of wholeness, the beauty of these sculptures is born from the force that resides in their infirmity- it seems that what once was trauma in the figures’ embrace, in their struggles, their suffering and their emotional imbroglios, is here reconfigured as a new dance. Despite all the ruptures and cracks, movement is still the key element of Kvesitadze’s art, comprising a variety of artistic media, from kinetic sculptures to watercolours...
TAMARASTUDIOArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Tamara Kvesitadze - artist's biographyArt Palace of Georgia - Museum of Cultural History
Georgian State Museum of Theatre, Music, Cinema and Choreography - Art Palace
George Kalandia
Mary Kharaishvili
Irakli Zambakhidze
Special thanks to Tamara Kvesitadze, Paata Sanaia, TAMARASTUDIO and GALLERIEKORNFELD
2018
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