Gia Edzgveradze (b.1953) 1989-1996 Lives and works in Munich (Germany). In 1996 he moved to Düsseldorf (Germany). Gia Edzgveradze’s working medium is diverse – painting, sculpture, performance, video, photography, text. Gia Edzgveradze’s work comes out of a rigorous engagement with art history, philosophy, politics and theory. Since the 1980s, along with abstractions, he has been creating so-called black-and-white series, typical conceptual works, where he rejects the sensual, emotional perception of the work and focuses on the idea and its intellectual comprehension. Karlo Kacharava notes about this series: “Gia Edzgveradze found an almost universal method of painting almost calligraphically with black on a white background in the early 1980s, as means of actualizing conceptual signs and ideas”. Since the beginning of the 1990s, Gia Edzgeradze has been actively exhibiting in Georgia, Russia, as well as in Europe and USA, the Tate Modern, the Venice Biennale, private and museum exhibitions – Berlin, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, 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 centre. 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.
