BI Auction's “Corona Days” Artworks Promote Young Georgian Artists
Picasso once said, “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” We are currently in such a time: a time of isolation, in which we can fill our lives with new exploration, creativity and discovery, or simply wait, in stasis, for “normality” to return. Some, such as BI Auction, see the need to direct these days and feelings towards art, literature, music and new designs for life.
As such, the organizers have set to promoting those artists creating works throughout the pandemic, uniting them in the online exhibition ‘Artists Artworks @Corona Days’.
GEORGIA TODAY asked Bengü Akçardak Küçük, Founder-Partner of BI Auction, to tell us the motivation behind their latest innovative project.
“BI Auction organized the first competition, and then auction, for young artists under 30 in January this year. When we entered these days of quarantine and self-isolation, I really worried about our artists, wondering what their health and mood might be, shut away from external inspiration. And yet I had the great belief that during this period, the artists, gifted persons that they are, would perhaps be able to use their time to create their best pieces, and to at the very minimum, to express their feelings with their artworks,” Bengü told us.
“Art unites us. Art helps us to heal and to overcome hardships such as this pandemic, making the days pass a little more easily,” she added. “As such, every day on the BI Auction facebook page, I will be posting one or two paintings from one of the young artists who participated in our first BI Auction Young Artists Competition- new works which they have created during these ‘corona days’. Some of these we will be sharing with GEORGIA TODAY’s readers.”
Surviving in a Speechless World
Mariam Dolidze is a student at the Tbilisi State Academy of Art. She participated in two exhibitions in Tbilisi before BI Auction’s 'Competition and Auction for Young Artists’ in January. She is very talented, not only at expressing her feelings through art, but also in the way she uses light in her paintings.
“While creating these artworks, I felt very stressed by the coronavirus because it was as if everything had turned into a mist which I could not see through,” Dolidze says. “The only way for me to survive was to create, as the process of creating goes some way to putting things in order. The pose of the figures on these canvases expresses a strong sense of hopelessness: that feeling you get when you want to scream, but can't. When a person has a mind that is fogged, art can heal: creating can put the sun and moon back in their rightful places in the world, returning beauty and peace. But this can only come after pain, pain of the soul. And facing this feeling, you are speechless. Right now, the world is speechless.”
BI Auction is the first Art Auction Company of Georgia, established in 2016 with the aim to promote Georgian Art and artists and enlarge the market. In four years, BI Auction ‘for ART’ has organized seven auctions and presented more than 400 paintings from 120 Georgian painters. In every auction, the collection is selected from among thousands of paintings from well-known legendary artists of Georgia and also from promising young artists. For more information contact biauction1@gmail.com.
By Katie Ruth Davies
