Sulakauri Exhibition: Taught to Paint as Soldiers while Dreaming of Freedom
On July 5, with the support of the Georgian Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection, Joseph Grishashvili History Museum hosted the opening of the exposition of artworks by Davit Archil Sulakauri.
This is the first large-scale exhibition for the 65-year-old artist, displaying 100 of his artworks, and came about thanks to his winning a contest declared by the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection in 2017, in which the painters from Tbilisi and regions took part as curators of their own project and catalogues.
Sulakauri creates landscapes, portraits, multi-figural compositions, paintings on religious topics and graphic works on handmade paper. His paintings are impressive, and the monumental canvases equally so, in which tradition and innovation reside on friendly terms. The artist maximally applies to the possibilities of a color, and uses a deliberate deformation of shapes, loading his works with strong emotional drive and feeling.
He was born into a family of artists. “My grandfather, who was a film dramatist, was exiled but returned. He made us fall in love with literature and art. My father was a film director and wanted me to follow his path but I did not. My uncle was a famous writer. I owe him a lot,” the artist told us, adding that it took him 25 years to get to know what art is. “The main thing is to own the necessary impulse to convey reality. “If there is no relevant impulse, there is no art,” he confides.
Sulakauri works in iconography, encaustic art, graphic art, painting, employing a variety of materials. "I chose the encaustic direction when living, working and teaching in the US, as this is a material that is steady and does not require special care and conditions.”
He notes that the US gave him extra freedom, as there, personality is what matters.
“I was born in times when artists were protesting. When studying at the Academy of Fine Arts, we were taught to paint with too many rules: we were trained as soldiers. We dreamed of freedom, which came at last. However, some misunderstood it. Freedom also has its regularity. One must not surpass moral values.”
To the question, what matters more – shape or content, he replies that these are two inseparable parts of art. He chooses material in harmony with an idea. IDPs, death of a warrior and torture prevail in his works, which makes it easy to guess that he comes from a country that suffered a lot. However, he is in search of light and kindness and believes that there is no wickedness in the world, but rather a lack of kindness.
WHERE: Sioni Str. 8
WHEN: Until September 10
Maka Lomadze