June Art Fair 2021
Presented artists: Mamuka Japharidze and Nika Kutateladze
Gallery Artbeat is delighted to present Mamuka Japharidze and Nika Kutateladze with a selection of historical and contemporary artworks at June Art Fair 2021.
Mamuka Japharidze returns us back to 80s-90s Georgian avant-garde scene. In his creativity neo-expressionistic practices emerge, which in itself imply conceptual nature of pop art. Font, language/communication and myth are those three essential components, by means of which the artist constructs his artistic conceptual system. Japharidze offers us interesting synthesis of the Georgian myth and the Soviet and capitalistic symbols. This synthesis represents the historic background of the 90s Georgia as an encircled transitional cultural field of the Post-Soviet space and capitalism.
From the series of Rolex created in 1993 artworks are put in the rich ornaments of a golden - colored frame and are signified with famous brand names – Rolex and Omega. These signs ironically refer to the myths of the commercial world. Georgian script/writing is represented significantly in the same art series as well as in other archival material. It expresses the architectural nature due to its graphical forms and plays a crucial role as a cultural denominator.
Next to the iconic underground artworks of the contemporary art scene of the early 90s Georgia, recent works by a prominent, young artist, Nika Kutateladze will also be presented at the fair. Kutateladze is an actively engaged artist on the contemporary art scene and it can be said that he works with a similar principle to Japharidze’s adopting social contextual elements of the Georgian ‘Supra’ (feast), geographic identity, landscape, characters and atmosphere. In his painting series the artist uses expressionistic, grotesque and ironic forms and at the same time describes processes of everyday life of his protagonists, work, feast and many other. Nika Kutateladze’s figures in his painterly medium are carrying deep psychologic features and expressing their simple emotional states. His artistic worldview is grounded by a following paradigm. At first it includes geographic identity and necessary means of expression in forms. And second - interplay between sacral and profane values. Artist on the one hand shows us without any hidden forms local people’s social and profane daily life in different aspects with plastic bottles, way of clothing, and even habitual gestures and on the other hand, he tries to develop and observe sacral elements in situational and casual events.
It is clearly observable in his works that he establishes critical discourse around real events. The artist tries to generalise these issues in visual forms and by doing he raises local social contexts to the global scale.
Mamuka Japharidze (born in 1962, in Tbilisi) lives and works in Tbilisi and UK. The medium of his works changes according to the context and environment and includes: happenings, collections of objects and images, video projections, photography, linguistic games, drawings, sound design, prints, photo archives collected over a long period of time…
Since 1987, Mamuka Japharidze has been working on conceptual projects. ARTRA was presented at the Georgian Pavilion, the 48th Venice Biennale, 1999. In the same year a video projection, Eye Trees was presented in Atlanta. The artist’s works were exhibited at Georgian National Museum several times, including Reframing the 80s in 2012 and Re:Museum in 2014. With the works by other Georgian artists, Mamuka Japharidze’s installation was featured at the exhibition Beyond Credit at Art in General, in New York.
Nika Kutateladze was born in 1989, in Tbilisi. He studied on the faculty of Architecture at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts between 2007 – 2011. In 2013 he graduated an informal master’s course at the Centre of Contemporary Art, Tbilisi (CCA-T). The majority of the artworks comprise installations and sculptures, reflecting day-to-day consumerism and different environmental issues. His later artistic utterances challenge the transformative process of architectural spaces and urban environment, in general.
Selected solo and group exhibitions:
2020-21 - ‘Tariel is Getting Ready for Hibernation’, Gallery Artbeat, Tbilisi, Georgia2019 - ‘Metamorphosis’, Art in Europe Now - The Fondation Cartier, Paris, France; 2018 - ‘To Protect My House While I’mAway’, Tbilisi Architectural Biennial, Tbilisi, Georgia; ‘Watermill on Former Pavlov Street’, Kunsthalle Tbilisi, Georgia; 2017 - ‘Minibus and Playground in My Old Apartment’ at Mitskevich Street 20, Tbilisi, Georgia; ‘Double Standards’, Yarat Contemporary Art Centre, Baku, Azerbaijan; 2016 - ‘Wall, Coarse calico, Parquet’, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2015 - ‘AD HOC’, LA STATION, Niece, France; 2014 - FEST I NOVA 2014 - ‘OPUS MIXTUM’, Art villa Garikula, Georgia; 2013 - ‘Am I You’ - Gallery Container, Tbilisi, Georgia.