Maka Batiashvili - Playground

Playground represented a selection of Maka Batiashvili’s latest oil paintings, dating 2014-2015. The exhibition was organized by Project ArtBeat and TBC Bank and took place at TBC Gallery. Playground is a general overview to the artist’s practice overall, where playing as a theme or as an approach is often represented.

“Playing, as a performance begins in one’s childhood and lasts throughout their lifetime. It comes in different forms and always has a certain aim implied. In childhood one needs toys, as for an adult the toys change into other, more expensive tools. One also tends to adjust a role, in order to hide behind it and play. Its the playing that one balances and controls their actions and emotions on the same playground where one was born and keeps on living. This is the playground one cannot escape;” - Maka Batiashvili.

Maka Batiashvili (B. 1975, Tbilisi, Georgia)

Batiashvili accomplished her Bachelor degree in Fine Art at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 1997 and since then, she lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Batiashvili works in graphical drawing, oil painting, photography and film. Her exuberant work depicts scenes from the everyday. Through the subject matter, Batiashvili poses questions around the existential issues of life and death. In her work the everyday life resembles a playground, where various scenes are being performed. Ostensibly unmediated figures and the intense color scheme in Batiashvili's work share stylistic tendencies with the early modernist painting traditions of Georgia and Europe. Batiashvili's practice is an interesting cross between the traditional and the contemporary painting, developing the well-established tradition of painting popular in the republic of Georgia.

Maka Batiashvili lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Selected solo and group exhibitions:
2015 - Playground, TBC Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia; Exhibition of Georgian Painters, Contemporary Art Center, Tel Aviv, Israel; 2013 - Untitled, Arundel Gallery, Arundel, UK; 2012 - Untitled, Industrial Gallery, Ostrava, the Czech Republic; 2011 - Black and White, Tbilisi History Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2008 - OFF EUROPA Festival, Leipzig, Germany; Photography Exhibition, National Museum, Atlanta, USA.