Provisional Identities of Rusudan Khizanishvili

 

Artistic path of Rusudan Khizanishvili is one of a constant search for Self. Self-discovery is always a resolution of one entanglement, leading to other resolutions; the process is seemingly endless as the artist goes through her life, becomes a mother, raises her nestlings, sets them free and then finds a new state of equilibrium. The vector of this investigation is Khizanishvili assessing her own individual continuum, defense mechanisms, her weaknesses and mysterious cults.

In doing so Khizanishvili defies any gendered expectations and with her immediate fluency and remarkable range of possibilities shifts through various identities. As she changes as a woman her identity and its reflection through works also change. Her earlier paintings and collages reflected Khizanishvili’s anguish over the dismemberment of a body, symbolically lamenting territorial processes of Georgia as it went through destabilizing period of a civil war and subsequent losses of territories to Russia. Previous solo exhibition Beauty and the Beast in the fall of 2022 in Berlin presented the artist’s engagement with the nature of aggression, of which any beast in a human form is always capable. Works on view in The Velvet Armor in Seoul examine the theme of preservation using a subtle, symbolic approach, amplified by Khizanishvili’s mastery of building up coloristic harmonies.

Coming from the post-Soviet state of Georgia the artist’s memory is attuned to the troubled history of the region. An ancient, small country has been a source for many legends starting with the Greek Argonauts, monster Minotaur, enchanting sorceress Medea. Georgian Middle Ages left a refined imprint on later visual culture of the country through magnificent frescos across numerous grand Christian cathedrals and smaller, solemn churches amidst emerald mountains. In XIX century, Georgia was well integrated within the European cultural life, many of its artists, writers, and thinkers regularly studied in intellectual centers of the day bringing home progressive artistic and visual concepts. This came to a full stop in 1921 when the Soviet Red Army invaded Georgia. The iron curtain fell down cutting off the vibrant intellectual life of Tbilisi from western influences for the next seventy years. Yet, through the channels of official and underground artistic practice of the Soviet culture the country was able to preserve its national identity and now is once again sending out contemporary talent into the world.

Art historical lineage of Khizanishvili within Georgian tradition is not direct. A student of a wonderful painter and talented essayist Esma Oniani (1938-1999) at Tbilisi Academy of the Arts, Khizanishvili’s works bear very little resemblance to the ethnic nuances of Georgia. Neither does she hint to either existence of Socialist Realism or its alternative underground artistic trends of the Soviet times. She is far more connected to the western painterly school, deeply admiring the Leipzig mastery of Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy, Northern Expressionism, Parisian Fauvism as well as contemporary mystical narrations of Bharti Kher or Adrian Ghenie, starkly interrupting the Neo Digitalization. While digitalization insists that we need it to know ourselves better and to be happier, genuine art asks us to embrace our own vulnerabilities This is the self-awareness Khizanishvili is after.

Through continuous self-reflection Khizanishvili has always oriented herself into the present moment, her provisional states of being. And in doing so she is trying to preserve national, ethnic memory because it could only be saved one person at a time. Works presented at The Velvet Armor all hold this impetus to preserve. A word, a color, a phrase, a gesture act as Khizanishvili’s talismans, methods of preservation. As critical theorist Edward Said wrote in his well-known book Orientalism published in 1979 “It is perfectly possible to argue that some distinctive objects are made by the mind, and that these objects, while appearing to exist objectively, have only a fictional reality." Likewise, Khizanishvili’s avatars need armor, protection from the wounds on the outside, but also on the inside. Some of this armor is tangible and some of it is implied, saving the artist from the chaos of life.

Individual voice of the artist is strong, by now she has long overcome anxiety of influence in Harold Bloom’s understanding of this term. She builds her pictorial and personal narrative by bringing focus to her own personal place in this world and within the contemporary art historical context of not Eastern Europe, but of the global stage. Khizanishvili was never a research-based artist in the traditional understanding of the term, her research focus is on the world literature, on the people surrounding her and close listening to the emotions that these two arouse. Probably this is the reason why Khizanishvili’s work always touch with their honesty and depth. Yet, her works are also cinematic – a reference to the artist’s deep engagement with auteurs of art house films such as Lusi Bunūel (1900-1983) and Alejandro Jodorowsky (b.1929), who both created an illogical version of logical reality that has its own rules. Khizanishvili follows this method in her canvasses. She follows words of Chilean-French surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodarowsky, in order to completely heal we need to teach our reason the language of our dreams.

 

Do not let intense, psychedelic beauty of The Touch deceive you. A hand is still touching the wound, although a wound hidden behind a lavish drapery coming straight from Veronese’s elaborate Venetian feasts. When visiting the Met Museum in New York and looking at the portraits of Elizabethan England Khizanishvili mentioned that to her a human hand is the most intimate and vulnerable part of a body, because it is defenseless in its nakedness. Here a hand is reaching out to preserve one’s own integrity. Iconographic transmission obviously makes a connection to the gesture of apostle Thomas trying to touch the wounds of Christ, disbelieving his miraculous rising from the dead. The woman in the work is checking for her own integrity, her wholeness. Khizanishvili has always stood for strong, self-sufficient, independent women able to create their own ecosystems and hermeneutically seal them.

 

Imaginary mechanism of protection is even more palpable in Balancing,2022 where the three figures are ensconced in a bottomless well. Well holds a sacral meaning here. As a figurative device it gives an artist a connection to a womb, silence, secrecy, mystery of a new, developing, life. The three women are performing a balancing ritual, clearly important theme to Khizanishvili’s self-analysis. We see interplay of the artist’s dreamscape and almost theatrical production underlined by patterns, real-life models and spiritual mysticism. Hypnotically aligned figures could be interpreted as a trinity of generations, three graces, three Greek Fates who are ready to cut some threads with invisible scissors. Khizanishvili is seamlessly inserting the entire symbolic history of our civilization into her own personal tale.

 

Interplay of history and an artistic vision reaches its apex in in an almost hallucinogenic scene of Observatory, 2023. A corseted beast on the outside and a gentle, vulnerable, maiden on the inside is sitting amidst craters on the moon surrounded by other celestial bodies. Pits are all there around the beast, she can easily fall there so she needs her fur in case that happens. Yet, inside the beast, behind a protective mechanism lives a gentle being wearing a pink, gossamer gown. The double nature is there to preserve one small light, a spark of authenticity, an inner island, to keep it peaceful and untouched. This intricate double nature of the beast/maiden reflect our own duality, our own facades as we switch from an ego-driven action into a more reflective mode of vulnerable subconsciousness.

In the 18th chapter of the Iliad shield made by the god Hephaistos for Achilles is described as showing landscape of the whole Greece, its people, their lives as well as mountains and seashores. This metaphor of an armor is what Khizanishvili is after. Her armor is shining with her power, with the power of her implicit national and individual identity. Khizanishvili is a contemporary artist to the core, which essentially means that besides her own examination she is here to be our guide in reflecting upon our cultural legacy.