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Thea Djordjadze Galerie Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers Cologne 30. August - 28. November 2008 The installations, objects and drawings of Thea Djordjadze echo the atmosphere of various art-historical and cultural-historical contexts. After completing her art studies in Tbilisi and Amsterdam, and during her time at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (studying under Dieter Krieg, then Rosemarie Trockel), the artist started work on a series of performances, which define a new framework for communicative exchange and experiences. Between 1999 and 2003 Thea Djordjadze exhibited extensively both regionally and internationally with the artist collective hobbypopMUSEUM, founded by students of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Since 2002 she has had solo exhibitions in Potsdam (Brandenburgischer Kunstverein), Berlin (Micky Schubert), London (Studio Voltaire, Sprüth Magers with Rosemarie Trockel) and Nuremberg (Kunstverein). Her works have also been shown in numerous group exhibitions such as the recent Karma International (Zurich), at the Kölnischer Kunstverein (Cologne), Museum Kurhaus Kleve, and at both the Lyon Biennial 2007 and the Berlin Biennial 2008. "It is the gaze of the flâneur, whose way of living still bestowed a conciliatory gleam over the growing destitution of men in the great city." (Walter Benjamin) The large exhibition space of the gallery is transformed into a "place": a passageway enclosed by an amorphous, sculptural form. In the long narrow corridor the viewer finds glass cabinets containing sculptures and objects. The "arcade" is also a meeting place, a thoroughfare and a space of transformation, which bears traces and inspires both the flâneur and the visitor. The favourite meeting places of the surrealists are a source of inspiration to the artist; they met in the streets and arcades of Paris, often situated at the hub of street life amid brothels and trade. For Thea Djordjadze these places represent points of contact with real life: they become sources of friction and moments of inspiration for the heterogeneous and the unthinkable - they become thresholds. These aspects inspired the fluid and, at the same time, tiered installation, in which, by strolling leisurely and with a successive, wandering gaze, the viewer leaves traces of him- or herself. Walter Benjamin's unfinished Arcades Project, a work dedicated to the urban spaces of the 19th century metropolis, which constructs topographies of memory, also deals with the traces of constellations left in a space; this is a central point of reference for Thea Djordjadze. Montage and a panoptic view of various angles are integral to the installation, analogous to Benjamin's original concept for the Arcades Project to become a montage of quotes. The moment of friction and encounter is further evoked in the space surrounding the arcade sculpture, with a sculptural counterpart that Thea Djordjadze created out of jute. Opening: 30.08.2008, 11am - 18pm Opening hours: Tuesday - Friday 10am - 1pm and 3pm - 6pm, Saturday 11am - 4pm Galerie Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers [official site]
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