LEVAN LAGIDZE | PROMISE
LONDON, MAYFAIR
November 2021
Katrine Levin Galleries at D Contemporary
23 Grafton Street, London, Mayfair, W1S 4EY
Promise - delivering on the artist’s promise to never cease to surprise us - was a vibrant exhibition of new works that expanded on Lagidze’s central idea of sharing experiences in harmony and gratitude and looking deeper beneath the surface to find true happiness - a theme especially poignant after the soul-searching months brought on by the pandemic.
The unique Mayfair gallery space - set in a period building with marble fireplaces and large windows leading onto a landscaped garden - provided a homelike warmth that resonated compellingly with Lagidze’s deep and uplifting works. The buzzing reception was opened by the Georgian Ambassador to the UK, Sophie Katsarava MBE and attended by guests and collectors who flew in for the occasion, including Katie Melua and Christine Ohuruogu.
All works for the exhibition were created in 2021, including six 130 x 105cm pieces, three 73 x 60cm pieces, and seventeen 35 x 32cm pieces from the “My Journey” subseries of gem-like and playful small works that tempt you to create a mosaic in tune with your living space and feelings.
LEVAN LAGIDZE is one of Georgia’s greatest living artists whose work is held in the permanent collections of major museums including the Tretyakov Gallery and Museum of Modern Art in Russia, the National Picture Gallery in Georgia, and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in the United States.
Inspired by Georgia’s landscapes and cityscapes, Lagidze’s outwardly abstract compositions contain traces of the figurative. Perspective has been flattened and each element within a canvas is given equal importance. Lagidze’s aim is not to prioritise, not to ascribe secondary or primary values but to allow every fragment to form part of a universal whole, so that ‘the earth is as important as the sky’. This creates a sense of paintings within paintings, as the smaller elements within larger canvases draw the eye and appear to stand alone, creating a Labyrinthian sense of art within artworks.
Following a grid like structure, paint is applied thickly using a palette knife creating texture, depth, and a sense of things hidden. Often vibrant, Lagidze’s canvases reflect the multicoloured nature of the world, with blocks of colour both in the forefront and also concealed, to be re-discovered by the viewer. The rhythmic use of line and colour creates a harmony that is also echoed in his meditative series, where variations on shades of the same colour create the sensation of being drawn into an ever-unfolding depth.
Born in 1958 in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, Lagidze graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 1981. He founded and led an artist’s studio at the Tbilisi Artists’ House in 1983 and served as Chairman of Georgia´s Young Artists’ Union from 1986 to 1989. In 2011, he founded the Lagidze Gallery in Tbilisi.