Roger von Gunten in Tbilisi

The Georgian National Museum opened the exhibition ‘Eden’ by Roger von Gunten at the Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts on August 10.

‘Eden’ is made up of artworks created in various media which provide a visual journey through the production of the artist. 84-year-old Roger von Gunten is a member of ‘La Ruptura’ (‘The rupture’) - a group of artists reflecting the transition from modernism to postmodernism in Mexico. He is a naturalized citizen of Mexico, who originates from Zurich, Switzerland.

“This collection is called ‘Eden’ because it shows the nature of Mexico,” Jose Cardenas, Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of Mexico in Turkey, covering Georgia, told GEORGIA TODAY. “It features the paradise of our country as seen by the artist.”

“Von Gunten's artworks are distinguished with chromatics, expressionism and informality; its theme reminding us of a comic,” said Lela Tsitsuashvili, art-historian and curator of the exhibition. “His creations represent a protest, expressed in intense color and distinctive contours. He expresses his attitude to inner and outer universe by merging colors and shapes, being in search of new artistic language. Each piece is in itself a paradox of postmodern knowledge, where the image supplies the content and the viewer resorts to the memory to facilitate the plastic reconstruction of that image. We could say that the work of Roger von Gunten is the recreation of a fiction, through another fiction, whose original narrative is re-conceptualized by the new reading of the beholder,” she said, adding that it is an honor for the Georgian National Museum to be able to present the art tendencies of different parts of the world.

“I would like to congratulate all my Mexican colleagues on the accomplishment of such a successful project,” said Zurab Eristavi, Ambassador of Georgia to Mexico. “It is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations. We, two countries, are quite far apart, geographically speaking. Culture is one of the ways to approximate the two nations. We also have good political ties, and try to build economic ties, too, but culture is the sphere in which both of these countries has a lot to offer the other”. In his words, there is a great interest towards Georgian opera in Mexico on which the Georgian embassy in Mexico is working.

‘Two beauties and a bird’, ‘Nude full of fruits and mushrooms,’ ‘The sea and the forest’, ‘Scenery with sea and nut,’ ‘Nude with mirror,’ etc, set on a pleasant journey to faraway Mexico, offering its phantasmagorical rendition in the form of Gunten’s magical-figurative world.

Since 1992, when Georgian-Mexican diplomatic relations were established, a number of cultural activities have taken place in both countries, including exhibitions and a gastronomic festival. September 1-6 will see one such gastronomic festival of Mexico being hosted by seaside town Kobuleti. A contemporary Georgian literature book has already been published in Spanish in Mexico and the Spanish reproduction of a Georgian history book is underway.

The exhibition ‘Eden’ is implemented on the initiative of the Embassy of Georgia to the United States of Mexico and is organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia and the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia.

WHERE: Sh. Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts, 1 Gudiashvili Str., Tbilisi

WHEN: August 10 - September 20

Maka Lomadze