Kote Sulaberidze’s works signify certain visual histories and represent visual icons of the everyday life. His art upholds the best Georgian traditions of pictorial thinking, of storytelling with visual images.Sulaberidze’s work Letters from Moscow, an installation consisting of nine white sheets, is based on personal experience. The work was created at the time when the artist was working in Moscow in 1990s, constantly longing for his family back in Georgia. These portraits of loneliness have also humorous tones as the figures which resemble those of pre-historical art, are telling vividly about the routines of everyday life: ”Dad is smoking after dinner”, ”Dad is dancing. Alone, without Nina”, “Dad on his way to work…at 9 am”, etc.
Sulaberidze’s painting My Caucasus consists of two parts: horizontally stretched landscape of Caucasus Mountains and a legend that explains the meanings of signs depicted on the canvas written with Georgian alphabet. The Caucasus landscape is given in a real scale, the locations and heights of its mountain passes and peaks are also true, however locations of tourist bases are those, which he or his friends have visited. One can also discover existence of locations of not-yet-found treasure, the ancient Georgian fairy-tail and mythological fantastic heroes. My Caucasus is both the artist’s Caucasus, and the real vision of these mountains. It contains very clear sign-symbols from history, geography, politics and mythology together with artist’s personal experience and memory.
Letters from Moscow, 1996-1997, installation
My Caucasus, 2002, oil on canvas
1 comment:
Although I find it in parts a bit schematic I like this work !! I have two works by Kosto ;-)
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