GOGI CHAGELISHVILI
The Paintings of Istanbul
GOGI CHAGELISHVILI
The Paintings of Istanbul
GOGI CHAGELISHVILI
The Paintings of Istanbul
November 18 – December 31, 2009
Gogi Chagelishvili considers his creative life to be divided in two periods, before and after “perestroika”. Before “perestroika”, he was working in his native country Georgia in the former Soviet Union, where artists were allowed to work only in the style of “ Socialist Realism” and where Gogi was representing a very few that refused to do so. He managed to create his abstractions even behind the “iron curtain” while never losing the sense of reality. His after “ perestroika” period starts in 1985 when Gogi took his first trip beyond the “iron curtain”. Istanbul was the first free city he visites, and it became the love at first sight as well as “inexhaustible source” of his creative work.
Chagelishvili’s paintings are impulsive and very expressive. His brush rtyhm sometimes feels lazy as if he is making fun of the authors who are trying to show off their tecnique. On his canvas he often deliberately leaves the casual contours, marked with a pencil that you can seen under the paint and transforms his picture into a figurative element.
Chagelishvili is an artist in search of the lost space in his landscapes, where nature is not an accessory, decoration or background, but rather a part of history, a grand melody with a “voice of silence”. All of a sudden the landscape motive becomes an abstraction. His color gamut is very rich and diverse and one can’t help but being delighted with his paintings.
Gogi Chagelishvili was born in Georgia. He is a graduate of Tbilisi State Arts Academy. He currently lives with his wife and two sons in Tbilisi, Georgia. Gogi’s works are kept in the museums, such as Tretiakov Gallery and Oust Museum in Moscow; Art Museum and National Picture Gallery in Tbilisi as well as in private collections in Barcelona, Moscow, Istanbul, Ottowa, Montreal, Christchurch and New York.
The solo exhibition by Gogi Chagelishvili will run from November 18 – December 31, 2009 at the Pirosmani Art Gallery located on 11-A Turnacibasi Street in Beyoglu, Istanbul.
GOGI CHAGELISHVILI
The Paintings of Istanbul
November 18 – December 31, 2009
Pirosmani Art Gallery is pleased to present “The paintings of Istanbul”, the exhibition by Georgia based artist Gogi Chagelishvili.
The Gallery is a sun filled, modern gallery located in Pera – Beyoglu at Turnacibasi st. 11-A. The Gallery has become a forum for up and coming and established artists from the local and international art scenes. Pirosmani provides free public access to the gallery open every day 11am – 6.30pm. The exhibition will be on view November 18 – December 31, 2009.
Gogi Chagelishvili was born in Soviet Georgia and he was one of the artist “Swimming against the current” maintained his avant-garde thinking even he was living behind the “iron curtain”. As the art historian Ketevan Kintsurahvili said “He has created his private, individual, ‘language’, hence no difficulty in joining various principles together turning eclecticism into ‘one’s own’ method. Even when creating abstractions Gogi Chagelishvili takes the sense of reality as an initial point. His abstractions originate not from any independent line or color, but from vivid objects or materials, space, structure and environment, saturated with real thoughts, feelings and individual emotions.
He paints on the canvas or wooden board creating strong, highly personal, poetic, accessible yet complex images. He is the silence voice of abandon streets, floating islands, ships, bridges, sea with mosaic blue, and ‘kintsora’ women.
He is one of the artist knows that “talent can not originate, genius must” and he originates with endless inspiration to viewers eye.
His extensive exhibition record includes the Art Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia; Oust Museum, Moscow, Russia; Nim Gallery, France; Dobson Bashford Gallery, New Zealand; Gallery Winkelmann, Germany; Gallery Cora, Canada, and many other most prominent Galleries in Turkey, Estonia, Czechloslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain and U.S.A.
Gogi Chagelishvili considers his creative life to be divided in two periods, before and after “perestroika”. Before “perestroika”, he was working in his native country Georgia in the former Soviet Union, where artists were allowed to work only in the style of “ Socialist Realism” and where Gogi was representing a very few that refused to do so. He managed to create his abstractions even behind the “iron curtain” while never losing the sense of reality. His after “ perestroika” period starts in 1985 when Gogi took his first trip beyond the “iron curtain”. Istanbul was the first free city he visites, and it became the love at first sight as well as “inexhaustible source” of his creative work.
Chagelishvili’s paintings are impulsive and very expressive. His brush rtyhm sometimes feels lazy as if he is making fun of the authors who are trying to show off their tecnique. On his canvas he often deliberately leaves the casual contours, marked with a pencil that you can seen under the paint and transforms his picture into a figurative element.
Chagelishvili is an artist in search of the lost space in his landscapes, where nature is not an accessory, decoration or background, but rather a part of history, a grand melody with a “voice of silence”. All of a sudden the landscape motive becomes an abstraction. His color gamut is very rich and diverse and one can’t help but being delighted with his paintings.
Gogi Chagelishvili was born in Georgia. He is a graduate of Tbilisi State Arts Academy. He currently lives with his wife and two sons in Tbilisi, Georgia. Gogi’s works are kept in the museums, such as Tretiakov Gallery and Oust Museum in Moscow; Art Museum and National Picture Gallery in Tbilisi as well as in private collections in Barcelona, Moscow, Istanbul, Ottowa, Montreal, Christchurch and New York.
The solo exhibition by Gogi Chagelishvili will run from November 18 – December 31, 2009 at the Pirosmani Art Gallery located on 11-A Turnacibasi Street in Beyoglu, Istanbul.
AGAINST CURRENT
Gogi Chagelishvili was born in Soviet Georgia. He is an artist belonging to the post-Khruschov “warming” period. Primarily he got his education at Jacob Nikoladze Arts School and then at Tbilisi Academy of Arts. Khruschov during his attack on the cult of Stalin had to slightly raise the “iron curtain”, but he could hardly anticipate that in a short while even the scantiest information, penetrating from west, would cause the “undesirable elements”, to grow in numbers around the country.
Gogi Chagelishvili was considered to be one of such “elements”, for he maintained his avant-garde thinking even when living behind the “iron curtain”. He proved capable of grasping the most essential and had no desire to burden it with details; still this kind of vision contradicted Soviet Socialist Realism.
The artist sensed novelty and attempted to get hold of it “through the air”. He needed but few impulses to reveal the pulsation of age. During the times of Stalin’s dictate artists were allowed to work only in the style of Socialist Realism, and any manifestation of avant-garde thinking was severely smothered. During decades even the awareness of modernist art was lost, but after Stalin’s death, Khruschov was instrumental, in causing the situation to warm up, letting at least some information from west into the country. This information was rather limited and strictly monitored; nevertheless it had a powerful influence on non-conformists. In the underground of 1960s, due to the slightly unfettered situation some artists started, under the influence of American abstract expressionism, to develop abstract expressionism as their artistic method. Later in 1970s some pop-art elements penetrated into the Soviet Union. Pop-art, as an artistic style, was also a cultural phenomenon, originating in western countries. Hence no prerequisites for its development in the Soviet Union, at least in the form in which it evolved in the capitalist world. However, elements of pop-art penetrated into the communist state and manifested themselves mainly in a collage technique it put stress on the importance of object, in free operations with color strokes and draining paint, indicating a trace of abstract expressionism in pop-art. Similarly characteristic is an eclecticism – also a feature of pop-art, considered to be among the first post-modernist movements. The painters of 1970s with “different” modes of thinking, reluctant to adjust their artistic method to strict limits, adopted these rules in no time. Gogi Chagelishvili belongs to this generation of artists.
While staying in a village Gogi Chagelishvili borrowed his uncle’s trousers and made Picasso’s portrait out of them. This is a manner familiar to the pop-artists. For the Soviet non-conformists of 1970s collage and Picasso represented a means of escaping from Socialist Realism.
A renowned Serbian writer Milorad Pavich, when remembering “avant-garde” artists of his times writes in one of his novels that in Yugoslavia of those days the artists were kind of “swimming against the current”. Gogi Chagelishvili, an artist from Soviet Georgia, was also swimming against the current, but there were few such artists in communist countries.
From today’s viewpoint, Gogi Chagelishvili, due to his non-conformist mentality may be regarded as a real post-modernist artist. He has created his private, individual “language”, hence no difficulty in joining various principles together, turning eclecticism into “one’s own” method.
Even when creating abstractions Gogi Chagelishvili takes the sense of reality as an initial point. His abstractions originate not from any independent line or color, but from vivid objects or materials, space, structure and environment, saturated with real thoughts, feelings and individual emotions.
The sources of his inspiration are landscapes of Armazi and Old Tbilisi, Istanbul or some other place. For Gogi Chagelishvili Istanbul is the beginning of Transformation, therefore this place remains in his imagination as a continuous source of motivation. In 1985 the painter took his first tourist trip beyond the borders of the so called “Communist Camp” countries. It was a sea voyage and the first place where the holiday ship threw its anchor was Istanbul. The wind of freedom blowing from the city had ever tightly linked his life and art with this place.
According to Gogi Chagelishvili, his creative life can be divided into two phases: before and after “Perestroika”. I would rather say, before and after Istanbul. At the first stage the painter worked in his own country where his actions were directed against the current, and at that time he was only trying to catch up with the mainstream of the development of world art. At the second stage his art gradually merged into the mainstream and started to fit into the rhythm of time.
Gogi Chagelishvili’s works reflect Istanbul with “floating” white silhouette, ships and minarets, terraces and bridges, and sea of course… Sea horizons are a special source of his inspiration. Sea, with its infinite blue color and all the mysteries buried in its depths, with secret inner passages and directions, which the painter indicates in form of arrows (a post-modernist vision), are the basis of many of his semi-abstract paintings.
Yet the core of Istanbul impressions is Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. Colorful pieces of smelt and intensity of its brilliance stir impulses in the painter. The Blue Mosque, with innumerable shoes (or without shoes), with sky blue head covers and various gradations of blue color, with the infinity of ornaments (indefinite as a degree of transcendental) impassions likewise, which is perhaps due to the sensations evoked by Gogi Chagelishvili’s installation.
Gogi Chagelishvili’s works bear associations with Paul Klee’s paintings. After viewing at the New York Metropolitan Museum samples of Byzantine art one can easily detect their logical affinity with Paul Klee’s abstractions on the other floor of the same museum. In both cases illusion is totally denied at the expense of ignoring material object. In the Byzantine art such effect is attained through alienation of physical reality, while here, according to Rudolf Arnheim, “the body is a visual symbol of the spirit”, whereas Klee, a modernist painter initially denies material object and referring to Arnheim again, finds the sublime in the abstract.
A post-modernist’s work may be extremely generalized and simultaneously contain a lot of concrete details (“The post-modern… puts forward unpresentable in presentation itself”. Jean Francois Lyotard).
Such eclecticism is a sign of epoch rather than the lack of taste, because consensus of tastes is an organic implication of post-modernism – a characteristic initially revealed within the frames of pop-art. A pop artist does not have to hide objects, and it should be borne in mind that Gogi Chagelishvili originally comes from pop-art (remember his “The Bucket”, 1976). Consequently, both ship and shoe could be shown explicitly in his works, which will never interfere with generalization, as space in his pictures absorbs many layers. For instance, ships floating on a sea surface, side by side with indistinct elements create precise mood on canvases representing Bosporus Bay. Actually it is hard to say whether the sea itself showed him how to reproduce space and various shades of blue or possibly it was the mosaic of Hagia Sophia or The Blue Mosque which gave him the clue.
Thin layers of paint and texture of canvas also assist in the creation of feeling of spaciousness. Gogi Chagelishvili often paints on a wooden board, explicitly exposing a lower horizontal line of wood. Sometimes this line serves as a foundation for the figure, presented on the foreground, and due to the created impression, we seem to be looking through the window – the main setting shown on the background. In most cases Chagelishvili’s compositions are lined up horizontally, in expanse. He might have adopted this type of projection because of a mountain, which is screening, like an enormous wall, his house in Armazi.
In an “Abandoned Street”, one of Gogi Chagelishvili’s most successful series, his literary talent is manifested as well (he is also the author of many essays). The sights of suburbs stirred deep emotions in him. He pulled a piece of wood off the fence and started painting. There are no people in those pictures, and the buildings are ready to be pulled down, yet the trace of life remains, and this is what produces a feeling of sadness and nostalgia. Thin but frequent strokes of paint create a kind of fluorescent gleaming on the canvas surface, imparting vagueness and mysterious emotionality to the whole composition. This manner of painting also imparts a lot of dynamism to the pictures.
Chagelishvili’s winter landscapes are always more concrete and bear resemblance to “environmental” portraits. A white snow cover is the main generalizing feature of such pictures; colorful details, contrasting with white, impart special decorativeness to the pictures. Perhaps it is from Breugel via Georgian artist Elene Akhvlediani that this kind of vision of winter landscape originates.
After the collapse of Soviet system and downfall of the “iron curtain” it became obvious that, thanks to such artists as Chagelishvili, the intrinsic logic of the development of art was preserved in their homeland. In other words, the “swimmers against the current” subsequently managed to catch up with the mainstream world of avant-garde art – a goal not so easily accomplished.
In Gogi Chagelishvili’s paintings I recollected my quick impressions of Istanbul. The impressions were rather complete, despite alienation from reality and all artistic conventionality or perhaps due to all above the stated…
Ketevan Kintsurashvili
Art Historian Fulbright Scholar
Pirosmani Art Gallery located in Pera, Beyoglu, Istanbul, is a space that seeks to create a dialogue amongst different communities through exhibitions, lectures and other activities. The gallery is a contemporary art gallery that exhibits international emerging artists working in photography, painting, glass, ceramics and sculpture.
In June 1995, Pirosmani Art Gallery (former İlyada Art Gallery) opened its doors thinking about Istanbul as a platform for various and diverse cultures and realities.Pirosmani Art Gallery invites artists coming from different cities or countries who have investigated this condition of diversity and fusion using all types of media.
Pirosmani Art Gallery represents the following artists: Gogi Chagelishvili, Otar Sharabidze, Mamuka Tsetskhladze, Gia Japaridze, Ksenia Kravchenko, Ia Arsenishvili, Levan Chogoshvili, Velislav Minekov, Otar Vepkhvadze. Many of these artists exhibited in Istanbul for the first time with Pirosmani Art Gallery.
The name of “Pirosmani” comes from the famous Georgian painter Niko Pirosmanishvili.
Sincerly,
Ömer Güneş
