Ketevan Shavgulidze, Mzia Chikhradze

A New Queen of the Art Scene

Simultaneously, with the extension of the contemporary art space, the estimation of tendencies, influences and the art world market becomes more and more complicated. We live in a world of regionalization where art scenes flourish simultaneously in Sao Paulo, Singapore and Istanbul, for example. But at the same time, the key influences are concentrated in our global financial capitals, such as New York and London.
It is significant that New York is a leader; the city’s art market basically exceeds all others. It is tremendous in size and it unifies: over 1000 galleries, 75 art museums and institutions, and over 30 art fairs. Of all art works that sell for over $1 million, 65% go to New York.
Against the background of discussion of the New York art scene, it is important to determine the niche occupied by contemporary Georgian artists: in what ways are they planted in the landscape of American art; how much of their art is accepted and acknowledged; whether Georgian artists have become integrated or not in the New York art scene; and just how much interesting or actual contemporary art do they create today – and in what ways?
Thus, representing the prominent New York galleries and museums, we discuss the art of contemporary Georgian emigrant artists exposed there; we do so in order to show explicitly their place and importance in western – or more specifically – American art space.
Local galleries create New York’s cultural landscape and bring to the light the new artists who represent the city’s future and that of the art world beyond the city. It should be noted that in the 1800s New York’s first gallery district emerged in Lower Manhattan. Most of the galleries were not open to the broader society and aimed only to serve wealthy customers. These galleries were focused on European art. In Manhattan’s Upper East Side, as the 20th century dawned (but before the establishment of the famous art museums and institutes), numerous rich private galleries opened. In parallel with them there also appeared galleries that focused on the middle class; both types of gallery became essential supporting factors in the democratization-of-art process. Simultaneously, Greenwich Village was developing as an art centre where studios, artists’ unions and experimental spaces oriented on new young painters were created in a low-rent environment.
Only 30 galleries survived the Great Depression. The Upper East Side galleries were still oriented toward high society and were busy selling the works of outstanding painters, but in Greenwich Village galleries were exhibiting new, experimental art works. In the New York art world this kind of polarization of the art scene went on for several decades before attracting a great number of European artists displaced by the postwar economic upheaval.
By 1945 there were some 90 galleries in New York, and by the 1960s their number had increased to 406, and by 1975 to 761. Unlike the previous period when the city’s art market developed in parallel with wealth migration, the galleries’ basic interest was a large space with a cheap rent. The pioneering gallery districts were SoHo and TriBeCa, where in the beginning of 1960s a lot of abandoned buildings and warehouses were transformed into studios and exhibition halls.
The historic Brooklyn Institute (which in 1898, with the incorporation of Brooklyn into New York City, became the Brooklyn Museum) is an interesting example of this expansion. From modest beginnings in 1828, today’s Brooklyn Museum is one of the United States’ biggest art museums; its collections contain over 1.5 million items – from ancient Egyptian artefacts to contemporary artworks. The museum’s area is 52000m2 and each year it draws approximately 500,000 visitors.
The old Institute was considered as Brooklyn’s cultural, educational and recreational centre; today it is a unique space known for its “inspiring meetings with art that extends our standpoints about ourselves, the world and its abilities.” The Museum is an art platform with a global meaning: it created both historical and original shows, installations, film screenings, and festivals based on high standards of curatorial art. It also offers research and educational programs.
Levan Songhulashvili is the first Georgian painter whose works are on permanent display in the Brooklyn Museum, one of New York’s premier art institutions and home to paintings of many of the greatest artists.
Levan Songhulashvili’s creativity and the acceptance that the American art market expressed toward him is a good example of Georgia’s relationship with the local New York art space, and is also an authentic assimilation into it. After graduating from Tbilisi Art Academy’s Faculty of Graphics, Levan Songhulashvili, then 27 years old, went to study in America. He graduated from New York Academy of Art after taking master courses in the painting of Andy Warhol. For Songhulashvili, New York is the world capital; as he stated, this city became not only an educational Mecca, but also a welcoming environment where he gained deeply distinctive experiences – he felt his beloved jazzy rhythms in the chaotic dynamics of New York. He assimilated very fully into the American art space, and in 2018 he was listed as No. 1 on a listing of New York’s top 10 painters.
As an artist Songhulashvili is focused on the conceptual significance of art, but in the case of the visual verbalization of his ideas he follows irrational impulses. Levan’s thinking and opinions embrace many fields; he thinks about everything: “form language, visual codes, musicality in color, image perception, exempted particles excerpted from larger fields, the relationship of eye, mind and spirit. In general, about the present and future of art…” As he himself says, in the end he returns to “the surface and enigmatic sense of the cognition of incognizable (the unknowable) that denotes [for him] a victory over nihilism.”1 Thus, a graphic picture transforms itself into the main weapon of reaching the incognizable, and its visualization is a crucial element in his art. As for the artistic mastery of this young artist, it is undoubtedly surprising.
In the beginning of 1970s, far distant from the “centre,” an interesting development for New York’s art life occurred as the Queens Museum, which unifies not only the art museum (its permanent collection contains over 10,000 artifacts) but also an educational centre. The museum functions as multi-disciplinary platform that offers the visitor exhibitions, film shows, performances, musical experiences, and public talks.
According to the museum’s mission, at present it is a space not only for displaying “top-quality visual art” but also for offering perspectives on educational initiatives and on society-focused programs. These are open to local residents, painters, tourists, pupils, students, specialists, artists, immigrants and others. … Among the exhibitors is an emigrant Georgian artist, Anna K.E. Her work “Profound Approach and Easy Outcome” was presented in the Queens Museum in January 2018. The photo of formally dressed man stares down from the wall. Below him a young woman is imitating – with pathetic gesticulation – the man’s gestures. With such a representation the author speaks about her painful issues: feminism, power, domination of masculinity and the resistance of the female/artist – “a weak human being” – to such imbalance, “with her comic intuitive and gesture-like responses,”2 in which body, movement, and plasticity are basic elements of her artistic language.
Since 1980s Chelsea has been a very popular artistic district. It became transformed into a most important art centre where, in the beginning of 2000s, about 300 galleries were clustered. Several of New York’s so-called “blue-chip“ galleries are concentrated in Chelsea. Despite adverse economic conditions, the work of the artists will not fall in price, but is likely to increase.
Nowadays, simultaneously with Chelsea, there are other art centers: in the Upper East Side and in SoHo, TriBeCa and the Lower East Side. In Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Dumbo, and Bushwick have thriving art scenes, as does Long Island.
In September of 2015, Crain’s New York Business stated that there were 224 galleries in the Lower East Side, a marked increase since 2007, when the New Museum opened. The paradigm of the New York art scene altered and, in parallel with Chelsea, the Lower East Side transformed itself into a small-scale, but equally important playground; visiting the area became “obligatory” for art lovers. According to popular prediction, the next destination is Harlem, which is a new point on the art map. But before it, in parallel with Chelsea, the Lower East Side remains the locus of superb quality and energetic and intensive artistic processes.
The Simone Subal gallery, an interesting space on the Lower East Side, opened in 2011 on the second floor of a building located on the edge of Chinatown. The gallery is a space in which “flourish numerous discussions and programs which openly collaborate with other organizations and galleries and provide the context for analyzing conceptual works and philosophical issues.” The gallery’s directors hope that the location will attract activities with new meaning and importance. Subal represents outstanding artists in critical exhibitions of novice painters; for example, the conceptualist Sam Ekwurtzel and the abstract painter Sonia Almeida. Examination of curatorial records show that Subal exhibitions occur in group shows together with such artists as Uri Aran and Joan Jonas. The Subal Gallery’s exhibitions are based on extensive knowledge of the contemporary art scene and aspire to stimulate the mind.
In January 2018, in the Simone Subal Gallery (simultaneously with Queens Museum), Anna K.E. presented a project – “Crossing Gibraltar at Midday.” In the project the artist, a former ballerina, demonstrates choreography, though it is only the choreography of separate body parts, and the decontextualized features of the body create a sense of fragility and fluctuation. These elements intrude into the artist’s graphic works and their synthesis creates an eccentric unity when the fragile, breakable body confronts the world. In order to endure the press of the world, the subject needs a basis. That’s why the finger, knee, and foot have fasteners, as if in this way these injured parts become firm and what is weak becomes stronger. The trauma, when experienced, becomes a strength. This is a metaphor for transformation, for how a person acquires strength through breaking and through trauma.
The sound from the speakers intensifies the sense of fluctuation and existence within a sort of hostile environment. A viewer hears unfriendly voices – a street noise, a whisper, separate phrases: “You smelled of garlic – and I will love you more”, “Women are so kind”… a divided body and photo-collages of the graphic works with mumbling sounds involve the viewer in an unreliable, scary space. In spite of all, the exactness of the graphic works depicted on the wall and their estheticism neutralize or soften this feeling. The basic element of this complex work is a short video named, “God Created the World and I Did the Rest,” which is installed in a specially arranged, narrow corridor hidden from the eye. The video adds even more harshness to the artist’s message, which references the female sensuality that exists in this scary and unfriendly environment. The artist’s naked body gradually enters the still. Then there appears a pile of excrement laid on the esthetically attractive naked body, which, at first sight, is perceived only as an abstract outline, but soon it works as the sign, the metaphor of rivalry, duality, balance-imbalance, beauty and ugliness. In this case the following question arises: is it indeed an ugliness? If we extract the meaning from the excrement, if our knowledge about this substance equals zero, is it indeed ugly, filthy? Here numerous questions arise, which artist has left as a gap, and in this chaotic, postmodern world, makes us encounter them face to face. Now it is our turn to answer these questions or leave them without answers and float in the torrent of ambiguity in which we too become transformed into the unstable, fragile, and frail creatures.
Currently Sperone Westwater is one of the Lower East Side’s leading galleries, and it has played an important role in the development of the New York art scene. Sperone Westwater Fischer was founded in 1975 when three famous New York art dealers, Gian Enzo Sperone, Angela Westwater and Konrad Fischer, opened a small exhibition hall in SoHo (The gallery was renamed Sperone Westwater in 1982). It’s first exhibition focused on the art of famous American painters, together with that of the European avant-garde. Among the gallery’s earlier exhibitions of minimalist art works, those of Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and Sol Lewitt (1977) should be mentioned. The gallery’s major exhibitions also included solo shows of the following artists: Bruce Nauman, Richard Longo, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni. In 2002-2010 (before Gian Enzo Sperone became part of Sperone Westwater Gallery), Sperone had a gallery located in the Meatpacking District; subsequently, in September 2010, the new Sperone Westwater’s space emerged in the Lower East Side. The new gallery was established in the Foster+Partners building.
Today, after four decades of existence, the gallery continues to represent prominent artists working in different media. Relocation of such a serious commercial player to the Lower East Side is a basic indicator of the transformation of this district as an art center, especially when it is considered as “exhibiting the art of the new economy.”
Gian Enzo Sperone3, the founder of the gallery, has played a major role in the career of the Georgian emigrant artist Eteri Chkadua. The artist arrived in America with her individual “artistic signature.” Her earlier works remind us of 17th-century Dutch paintings. These early works met with greatly approval, probably because Eteri was a young, gifted, female artist. Soon, after her first successful steps she changed her style and her work became thematically complicated. She tended toward taboo issues and touched upon racial problems. These works fully displayed Eteri Chkadua’s complex, contradictory inner world. The artist depicted the lives of Afro-Americans, Caribbeans and Rastafarians – lives that were not fully accepted by the artistic circles of those times. For them, the interest of a white, young girl, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, toward Afro-Americans topics was obscure.
The crucial moment came into Eteri Chkadua’s art when she became acquainted with Gian Enzo Sperone, who became her dealer. By that time, the artist had painted several self-portraits. Sperone suggested to Eteri that she continue her “storytelling” with self-portraits, with her “face”; thus, she created her series of self-portraits. Eteri used her own type, in order to tell as much as possible about Georgia through the icon of a Georgian woman. The painter is identified with her protagonist. Her “self-portraits” are a means way of “confession” to her viewers. Her artistic language is realistic, almost naturalistic, but she narrates with metaphors and with icons. These figurative paintings extend to different kind of themes and concepts.
Eteri Chkadua was represented with her self-portrait in Gian Enzo Sperone’s gallery (Sperone Westwate), where an exhibition – “Portraits and Self-Portraits from the 19th to the 21st Century,” was held in 2012. The exhibition united old masters from Italy, France, England, and the Netherlands, with the artists representing modernism and contemporary art. The exhibition was the display of a certain process, continuing through the centuries, a process of exactly how portraits were created, what advantages there were in different eras and what kind of messages artists sent to viewers via portraits or self-portraits. Among the exhibited artworks were: “Portrait of a Gentleman” by Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio (mid-16th century), “Portrait of a Young Man” by Jacopo Negreti, also known as Palma il Giovane (beginning of 17th century), “Portrait of a Man with a Glove” by Jacopino del Conte (Venetian school, 16th century), “A Young Soldier” by Theodore Rhombus (Antwerp, 17th century), and also works by Richard van Blick (The Hague, 16th-17th century), Nicolas Largie (Paris, 16th-17th century) and other artists. Next to them were exhibited “Susan’s Portrait” by Francis Picabia, “Woman’s Head“ by Pablo Picasso, “Self-Portrait of Andy Warhol,” “Memory of 1951” (the same self-portrait) by Susan Rothenberger, “Group Portrait“ by Kim Dingley, and many other works.
Eteri Chkadua’s “Dance” (2006) was displayed in the exhibition, which presented a current western cultural review across the centuries. The artist depicts a surrealistic scene. A young woman is represented with strange attributes in an eccentric environment. The woman reminds us of the artist herself. Her long braids flutter, she holds white rats in her hands and dances a Georgian-style dance; in addition she dances the male part (this is a certain metaphor-sign of male and female role-exchange). As the protagonist of the picture, the woman possesses something diabolic. She dances with a furious, evil expression, as if she is carrying out a magic rite. The ambience is diabolic too, she is depicted against the background of a gloomy forest. Animals are gathered behind the woman; however, the woman is unapproachable, she is protected by her own magic power. As we observe the painting of the dancer’s face we detect tears. Probably this is the kind of strong woman who has taken male functions upon herself, and with her magic, wild dancing she attempts to survive in a world where masculine power prevails!
Sometimes in Eteri Chkadua’s art a heroine represents an exotic-mythological world, sometimes she represents the irony of altered traditions and national customs; sometimes she even proclaims harshly on political-social and feminist issues. “Minimal surrealism, a hyper-realistic, figurative image are fused with fantastic, dreamlike contexts. Plots are heterogeneous, ambiguous. The painter represents a woman in the form of a “feminist-devil,” in different psychological aspects and from different angles”4. “She is permanently at the centre of her own drama: revolutionary, physically brave, rebellious, secret, frightened, friendly, conformist or at all criminal” – writes Cintra Willson about the painter.5
Levan Mindiashvili’s art can be found in two well-known New York galleries – Odetta and The Lodge Gallery.
In Bushwick, Brooklyn, in 2014, together with other small galleries, the Odetta Gallery emerged; it was headed by Ellen Haeckel Fagan, an interdisciplinary abstract painter (synesthesia, digital media, interactive performance). The gallery focused on contemporary artists, and its primary fields of interests were color theory, minimalism, symbolism, Buddhism, music – in all, an encyclopedic obsession…
In 2013 Keith Schweitzer and Jason Patrick Voegele established the Lodge Gallery. It served not only as an art platform but also a basic discussion and experimental space. In spite of that, gallery was an active player in the art market; the press wrote about the leadership of the gallery: “Keith Schweitzer and Jason Patrick Voegele are young New York dealers whom we have to watch.” This year the gallery’s leadership has decided to cease operations. In parallel with the Lodge Gallery, Schweitzer is a founder/director of the Bushwick gallery David&Schweitzer Contemporary. It deserves mention that after closing his Lower East Side gallery, Keith Schweitzer has focused entirely on the Bushwick project – David&Schweitzer Contemporary.
As we have noted above, Levan Mindiashvili’s art is connected to Odetta and the Lodge Gallery. Through investigating the fluid identities and analyzing and studying the past Levan attempts to clarify the contemporaneity. His interest in architecture and public spaces, determining a person’s identity, was formed a long time ago. These public spaces often become intimate ones and the margin between the private and public is being extinguished.
To these issues referred Levan referred in the art work that he exhibited in the Odetta Gallery (“Hot Stuff,” 2018) and at the Lodge Gallery (“Borderlines,” 2014). There he expressed the themes that he finds interesting in architecture and public spaces – the idea of location, our identity, our attitude toward past, deleting the limit between private and public spaces, etc.… In Levan Mindiashvili’s works an artistic idea determines the selection of the medium; a work’s physical qualities always coincide with the idea. Mindiashvili’s architectural sculptures are created visually from concrete-like colored plaster. Fragile plaster expresses an idea of instability and frailty and refers to the basic themes of location and habitation, both of which become so fragile in our reality. Levan Mindiashvili also employs many different media in his art. In his art his mastership and genuine taste as a sculptor and a draftsman always stands out.
In 2016 Levan Mindiashvili and Uta Beqaia had a collaborative exhibition titled “Unintended Architecture” at the Lodge Gallery. Levan’s installations, sculpture- objects, and paintings again expressed the ubiquitous question within the visual artist’s thought: the perception of the past and the rethinking of history; the theme of location; the reconstruction of habitation and those locations in our memory – where we once dwelled and where our identity was formed.
Uta Beqaia’s art naturally fitted into this show since the themes of identity and historic memory are native to him. Uta concentrated on a genetic, biologic memory. His artistic world successfully unfolded in his and Mindiashvili’s common performance: “If You Lived Here You Would Be Home Now,” which was performed by the Japanese/ American butoh dancer Azumi Oe. On a board where sculpture-objects were hanging, the eccentrically dressed Azumi, her face concealed by a mask, inscribed Georgian letters, and then these letters turned into meaningless writings and scribbles. Azumi took off her clothes and her wig and appeared in “disguising” attire, which covered her whole body and face, as if with a skin. Then came the moment of removing the entire mask. Azumi removed this mask too, but her face did not become naked and it did not appear before the public. As if she was wearing the mask of the past, of location, habitation or genetic memory; a burden from which is impossible to free oneself. After performance, the abandoned costume was perceived as part of the exhibition and integrated into it as the metaphor of memory, of remembrance.
The above-mentioned galleries and museums, together with other famous New York art spaces, create the cultural landscape and bring to light the new players who represent the future of this and other cities. But no assessment of the current processes in contemporary art, and especially of American art peculiarities and new tendencies, is possible without considering the Whitney Biennale.
The Whitney Biennale is the attempt of an art museum address a difficult question: how can American art be assessed? Other art institutions hold big exhibitions, biennales and triennales, but none of them focus directly on American art. This domestic focus is controversial and in itself represents serious challenges both for curators and for painters.
During the 20th century the biennale was considered as one of the main reasons for the success of American art; the exhibition has a long history which is tightly connected to the development of the USA art. It is significant that before the post-Second World War period European art dominated in American galleries and museums: American artists struggled for respect and legitimacy. The idea of exhibitions of “American art” dates back to the Whitney Studio Club, which was established by Gertrude Whitney in 1918. As for the Whitney American Art Museum, it was founded in 1931 and became the leading venue for the popularization of 20th-century American art. At first it exhibited only paintings, sculptures and works on the paper (graphics, drawing, prints, collages…). Since 1973, when the Museum adopted the exhibition’s two-year pattern, its curatorial attitude has altered, which meant the inclusion of every sort of medium in the exhibition. In distinction to other New York institutions, which were mostly oriented on abstract art (as the primary form of modern art), in the Whitney Biennale, in parallel with an abstract art, figurative and realistic works were also exhibited. This exhibition policy to some extend stipulated a pluralistic attitude toward contemporary American art.
It is of interest what the Whitney Biennale and American art museums were saying about themselves in the conditions of increasing globalization: according to their present definition, “to be American” means the artists live and work on American territory, but it does not exclude the fact that these artists could be “on American territory” only temporarily or that they may also identify themselves with other countries.
Contemporary art develops simultaneously with ongoing changes in contemporary politics, economics and technology. It circulates very rapidly and extinguishes the difference between “there” and “here.” Digital reproduction and distribution require expansion of the art world. The global, pluralistic art world determines the issue of the exhibition of national art. Unlike the Whitney annual exhibitions nowadays term “Americn art” generates significant awkwardness and misunderstanding, in the same way as art speaking in a “national” language or the analysis of those national stylistic features that distinguish American art from the art of other countries. Even the simplest definition of American art – art which is created by Americans, begins to evaporate. The notion of “American” is so holistic and diffuse that any exact definition is complicated. It does not mean that today the Biennale has lost its meaning, but that it has transcended rigid classification frames. It demonstrates the heterogeneous face of contemporary America and also speaks about the essential issues of the contemporary world, namely about globalization, technologies, migration and identity. It unifies such actual topics as racial discrimination, gender balance, sexual orientation, the revaluation of traditional techniques and genres, and new media…
The Whitney exhibitions have always been topics of discussion because they have always been considered as a kind of mirror of modern American art. On the basis of recent exhibitions it is apparent that the Whitney Biennale, as well as modern American art, resembles the labyrinth, one which is the most essential metaphor of postmodernism and represents a certain nonsystematic space which moves constantly and is based on the idea of change. This is an art world where every path has an opportunity to intersect with other paths, “where there is no centre, no periphery…” (U. Ecco). This situation generates many meanings simultaneously; travelling in it looks like wandering in infinite labyrinth of opportunities, senses, experiences. There is no axis, no central topos that determines the vector of movement. There are no leading genres and tendencies, no primary and secondary fields. None of the directions has priority, none has any kind of privileged connection. The only constant is change: movement, which causes the creation of an infinite number of directions. In the architectonics of the American art labyrinth each path has an opportunity to intersect with other paths and create new paths that in turn generate yet more new paths.
It is considered that contemporary American art has incorporated the basic descriptive signs of postmodern culture – decentralization, discreteness and dispersion of hierarchic constructions, citation, intertextuality, duality, pluralism, chaos, sensitivity, irony, symbolism, perception of the world as constantly changeable, amorphous, multi-optional reality, double encoding, simulation, fragmentation, carnivalization and parody, hybridization and mutation of genres.
At the fore is intertexuality when in the same work there coexist different “texts,” including texts of previous cultures and ambient cultural texts. Old codes, formulas, rhythmic structures continue existing in a new context. The play with citations (‘citation’ encompasses borrowing not only of a trivial fragment but also stylistic codes that represent forms of thought and the traditions denoting them) transfers into the game of “languages,” where no language has priority over any others. The pluralism of postmodernism occurs; this means the simultaneous existence of different discourses. Time runs out of the modes and gains a vague face of ”past-present.” An open anti-form reigns.
The varied kaleidoscope of Georgian migrant artists, who live and work in America, harmoniously coalesces with the complex landscape of contemporary American art and its labyrinth. The Georgian artists’ art intersects with the space where painting, sculpture, photography, installation, movies, video art, performance, internet art – and art works not belonging to any definite category – coexist. The diversity of the issues of their art coincides with the topics of contemporary American artists and non-American artists who create in United States. The area of these problems is vast: feminism, gender topics, sexual and national minorities, fluid identity, migration, refugee issues, political, social problems, identity, cultural past and place, relations among human being and nature, internal duality of the person, questions hidden in subconscious… Therefore the visual-creative forms of expression of the above-mentioned topics are plural where replica, comment, citation, metaphor, reproduction, versatility of texts, and the mingling of an invented and true, illusive and realistic past and present create the field of shaky identifications, the demarcation of perception limits and poly-semantics, where nothing is exact; nonetheless, the space is vastly open for subjective deciphering.
This article was printed in a scientific journal “Academy.”