Thea Djordjadze - Explain away, ე.ი. Galerie Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers Berlin, 22. September - 07. November 2009
Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to present a new installation by Thea Djordjadze in Berlin.
Standing at the center of Explain away, ე.ი. is a wooden construction, a space which may be viewed and entered, a house or the fragment of a house. A site where the ordered delineations between living and working, between private and public have been canceled. Arrangements of things both objective and non-objective, which receive every person with a relaxed easiness and equanimity, regardless of whether he attempts to decipher them or not. Delicate, amorphous forms made of clay, plaster or paper-mâché enter into contact with sketchy drawings and dysfunctional constructions which bear witness to a profound investigation of modernism.
Djordjadze's installations are concentrated procedures of spatial investigation. The probing of actual conditions, the arranging and setting up of the works ushers them from the studio into the exhibition space. The visitor is confronted with an architecture which imbues the works assembled by the artist with the appeal of archaeological artifacts. Here abstraction requires a visual sensitivity for nuance. There arise elements and situations which link the detail to the whole. The material which she utilizes seems to give quiet assent to its transformation; it speaks through the form imparted to it and thereby becomes text.
Thea Djordjadze has entitled her exhibition Explain away, ე.ი.. The title implies making excuses, hedging at something: This is the reproach of a supposed objectivity, and with respect to it a hopeless undertaking. The Georgian letters ე.ი. may be translated as i.e.. They announce an explanation and refer to another linguistic space. The open position points towards the poetic field where the other can achieve its impact. Djordjadze's exhibition titles, in spite of their apparently enigmatic quality, are precise enticements of the viewer, invitations to a social game which takes place beyond language.
Thea Djordjadze, born in 1971 in Tbilisi (Georgia), studied at the Art Academy Tbilisi, at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with professors Dieter Krieg and Rosemarie Trockel, whose master student she became. Her works have been presented in numerous solo exhibitions both in Germany and abroad, including recently Endless Enclosure at the Kunsthalle Basel (2009) and Thea Djordjadze at the Kunstverein Nürnberg (2008). In addition, there have been important group exhibitions such as the BB5 - 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2008), the 9th Biennale de Lyon (2007, together with Rosemarie Trockel), as well as this year at the Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen the exhibition for the Kunstpreis der Böttcherstrasse which was awarded to her in the spring of 2009. In her work, Djordjadze again and again engages in collaborations with other artists; she was a member of the artists' troupe hobbypopMUSEUM and works regularly with Rosemarie Trockel on joint exhibition projects. Alongside installations and sculptural works, her oeuvre also includes the media of drawing, painting and photography as well as video works, musical recordings and performances.
Private View: May 21/09/2009, 6 - 9pm Opening Hours: Tue - Sat, 11am - 6pm
Galerie Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers [official site]