February 17 – April 30, 2023
“RANDOM BULLSHIT GO!!”
Giorgi Kontridze
Giorgi Kontridze was born in Ozurgeti, in 2000. At the age of 12, he entered the Ozurgeti Art School, and in 2018 started his studying at the School of Visual Arts, Architecture and Design (VAADS) at the Free University of Tbilisi, majoring in painting. Giorgi has participated in numerous group exhibitions. In 2021 he presented personal exhibitions: “Bad dogs” (curator: Irina Popiashvili, Fabrika, Tbilisi) and “Gujias” (curator: Tamuna Ghvaberidze, Window Project, Tbilisi).
The exhibition brings together paintings, graphics and sketches, created during the last 3 years.
The main working medium for Giorgi is painting and graphics. The most commonly used materials in his practice are cheap paper or wallpaper, on which he paints with oil paint, and pencil, marker or ink for graphic works.
Giorgi’s works are mainly a combination of figurative forms and text.
In the form of extracts, the artist’s works often contain fragments of advertisements, industrial product names, store signs, video games, memes, comics, personal chats or notes, or simply combinations of invented, non-existent words. These short texts or replicas Giorgi uses in his works, lose their original context and, to the extent that it is possible in case of words, are stripped of their content and transformed into visual forms, abstract images, filling the composition.
Despite the way he uses text, Giorgi Kontridze’s works always tell a story. These stories, in many cases, are interpretations of the author’s memories or stories heard.
Regardless of Giorgi’s characteristic style, it is difficult to put his works into one category – they show both naivety and mastery of classical painting and anatomy, both roughness and lightness of strokes, thoughtful carelessness and slovenliness at the same time
In terms of content, Giorgi’s art can be considered a mixture of dramatic stories, black humor, absurdism and poetic metaphors.
The title of the exhibition – “RANDOM BULLSHIT GO!!” – is taken from a famous series of memes, where the phrase is used in the context of an unconscious, mindless delusion or action.
