February
Vitrine VIII: Tolia Astakhishvili
My first experience with Tolia Astakhishvili artistic practice was in 2020 at Bonner Kunstverein. The work which was part of a group show and realized with one of her longterm collaborators, artist friend James Richards, left a deep impression. An immersive architectural structure that Tolia designed would over days record artistic gestures by the two artists,forming in its accumulation, modifications and eventual removal a narrative that points out a surreal inhabitation of this space. The arrangement of images, writings and objects within the structure would link back to the two artists intimate space of memories and fears as well as forming through their dialog and collaging a narrative on its own nature.
Following this project I was able to experience other projects in which Tolia established an architectural display whose specific psychology and story would come alive through providing a specified display for individual and collaborative interactions.
The presentation of Tolia’s paintings at Die Kette’s bar space is the first of its kind. The presentation focuses on a momentum within the artists practice which originates in periods of conceptual and intimate debate about memories, emotions as well as materials which eventual lead to bigger spacial concepts or just stay in this two dimensional space.
Tolia Astakhashvili (b.1974) works and lives in Berlin, Germany and Tbilisi, Georgia.
