We are delighted to present the second exhibition of the Swiss-Georgian artist Koka Ramishvili (born 1956 in Tbilisi, Georgia; living in Geneva since 2000) at our gallery. In his exhibition Coordinates, the multimedia artist focuses exclusively on the medium of oil painting. As the title suggests, Koka Ramishvili sets “coordinates” within the gallery space: on the one hand, he explores the possibilities of painting in each individual work; on the other, he establishes relationships between the paintings, thereby creating atmospheric spaces of resonance. His oil paintings are situated between abstraction and figuration. Unlike some of his other bodies of work, they do not refer to an art-historical or theoretical framework. Rather, in Koka Ramishvili’s own words, they are pure, simple, and deeply personal paintings that ask for close observation. They reveal the joy of the free life of colour in its dissolution or in the formation of an image, and the artist shares this experience directly with the viewer.
The pictures represent personal notations by Koka Ramishvili – records made with brush and paint, whose poetic resonance reveals itself only through sustained contemplation. Koka Ramishvili explains that colour comes to life through the dialogue between the colour and himself. On the wall opposite the gallery entrance hang three delicate works. They depict subtle, powdery colour spaces, onto which Koka Ramishvili has applied firstly vertical accent with a brush and secondly hand finishing of blue and violet, as well as dabs and circles of yellow and orange paint. The titles of the pictures come to Koka Ramishvili during the working process. They have no direct correspondence in the paintings but rather serve as inspirations – intuitive responses that emerge in the act of painting itself. The two smaller paintings evoke a sense of landscape, their titles suggest the fading of a summer evening, while the larger painting conveys inner pictorial coordinates. Two additional works, each emphasizing the centre of the composition, frame the trio. One title refers to a floating rose, the other to the cloudy lilac of an inner form. These two paintings differ significantly in their painterly technique: in the red form, every single brushstroke is visible, whereas in the lilac form, the brush traces are blurred, discernible only along the edges.
In the second room, Koka Ramishvili unfolds a wide range of painterly possibilities. A rabbit dissolving in motion – recalling the pictorial inventions of the Futurists – and a colourful, imperious parrot greet visitors as they enter. The largest painting in the room may be understood as an echo of the three works displayed on the wall opposite the entrance. Koka Ramishvili painted over the yellow background a translucent pink surface. The title of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (1795) served as a source of inspiration. According to the artist, the green bridge in the story enabled him to access his subconscious during the painting process.
In the painting Ephesian Temple in the Eternal World, Koka Ramishvili evokes notions of grandeur and sublimity through a dissolving painterly process. Next to it hangs the small painting Eros, a work imbued with a distinctly corporeal quality. It is followed by the mood of a Blue Elephant, positioned opposite the two colourful paintings Study for Parsifal and Coeur éthéré. Seven paintings of two different formats are arranged in an installation-like composition. Through comparative viewing, the individual works within this installation can be related to other paintings in the exhibition, thus contributing significantly to the dramaturgy of the exhibition Coordinates.
All works in the exhibition reveal Koka Ramishvili’s joy in the very act of painting. The artistic process – the focused application of oil paint onto the surface – resembles the writing of poetry: the weighing of words, the resonance of a phrase, and its echo in the next stanza all find their visual counterparts in this body of work.