Gia Edzgveradze (b. 1953) lived and worked in Munich, Germany, from 1989 to 1996. In 1996, he moved to Düsseldorf, Germany. Edzgveradze’s artistic practice spans a wide range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, performance, video, photography, and text. His work stems from a rigorous engagement with art history, philosophy, politics, and theory.
Since the 1980s, alongside his abstract works, he has been creating the so-called black-and-white series—conceptual pieces where he rejects the sensual, emotional perception of art, focusing instead on intellectual ideas and their comprehension. Art critic Karlo Kacharava wrote of this series: “Gia Edzgveradze found an almost universal method of painting almost calligraphically with black on a white background in the early 1980s, as a means of actualizing conceptual signs and ideas.”
Since the early 1990s, Edzgveradze has actively exhibited his work in Georgia, Russia, Europe, and the USA, including prestigious venues such as Tate Modern, the Venice Biennale, and private and museum exhibitions in Berlin, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, and Budapest.
“The theme is that the style of conceptual surrealism, which has spread throughout the world as the common language of advanced art, seems to have more juice and spice along the edges than in the center. Among those who seem to have kept alive the comic, larksome side of the Duchampian tradition is Georgian artist Gia Edzgveradze, who offers a neat, fragrant installation of raw carrots and grain. Perhaps it is because the situation of a ‘modern,’ let alone a postmodern, artist in those societies is still in some ways absurd that their art still seems proud of its absurdity,” – The New Yorker, July 14, 1997.
