January 16th, 2014 – February 4th, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, January 17th, 7-9pm
The Lodge Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in the United States of works by Levan Mindiashvili.
Levan Mindiashvili has been making work about urban landscapes that inform our sense of identity and the intimate connections we make with the spaces we inhabit since 2012. In 2003 he graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (Republic of Georgia) and the same year started intensively exhibiting his works in Europe. From 2008 – 2012 he lived and worked in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he received his MFA from the National University of Art of Buenos Aires
Mindiashvili’s new series, entitled Borderlines, is a study of his reflections on cities as both public and private meeting points. Originally conceived in Buenos Aires, this recent body of work explores the artist’s personal and collective experiences with the architecture and public structures of New York, where he is currently based. It is through his renderings of reflections amongst monumental objects, combined with a uniquely subjective reinterpretation of urban stimulation/inundation, that he reveals his complex and evolving personal relationship with the city.
Borderlines is an investigation into the sediment of his global experience, the invisible realities that have been burned into his subconscious country by country, city by city, block by block. “Generally, architecture most clearly defines and reveals the changes in our contemporary world, in our approaches and common visions,” says Mindiashvili.
His new work depicts distorted, almost abstract fragments of old architecture reflected on new, transparent surfaces or seen through them. “I perceive them as maps of consciousness of the contemporary world with its migrations, gentrification, identity and social issues,” the artist explains, “I want to trigger a dialogue about recent history.” The idea that a personal history is valuable and that the reflected perception of each individual dictates the overall substance and spirit of the larger urban landscape is deeply rooted in his intentions.