28 October to 22 December 2023

We are very pleased to present the first exhibition of Koka Ramishvili (*1956 in Tbilisi, Georgia) in our gallery. Koka Ramishvili is one of the most important artists from Georgia. In the 1980s he worked as an artist in the theater collective Orpheus in Tbilisi for stage design, lightings and props. This experience exerted a great influence on him and encouraged him to work in an interdisciplinary way. Koka Ramishvili uses different media for his art, photography, film, drawing, sculpture and painting. In each of his exhibitions he negotiates different visual issues.

For his show in Zurich, Koka Ramishvili focuses on the concept of landscape representation: landscape as installation and landscape as painting. He approaches the rendering of landscape not only from a position of gravity, but also from a spherical position. This approach is evident in the first room of the exhibition, where one smaller and six larger works on paper hang under the overarching title Horizon. Koka Ramishvili refers to this sequence of images as a melody of landscape. The only work that features a horizon line is the smaller sheet. This works shows a depiction of an ancient Japanese drinking vessel, which contains in a metaphorical way the essence of landscape representation in this series of works on paper.

In the second room hangs the painting Land, for which Koka Ramishvili at first sight followed a more traditional conception of landscape representation than in the works on paper in the first room, namely the Renaissance idea that the painting represents a view from a window. However, Koka Ramishvili breaks this notion of perspective depth rendering by surrounding the landscape depiction on three sides with a white border, thus he makes it clear that the picture only pretends depth and always has a surface. By adding these three marginal areas he also thematizes the choice of the image section. In the group of Lost Landscape works, the notion of landscape moves downward and from the second dimension to the third. The landscape is painted three-dimensionally and in several layers of paint on wood, which again in its materiality refers to landscape. Koka Ramishvili achieves the luminous effect of these sculptural works by painting a varnish made on an amber base onto the color surface.

The cardboard models on an elevated wooden shelf are three-dimensional realizations by Koka Ramishvili of buildings in paintings by Giorgio de Chirico. Koka Ramishvili sees these temple-like structures as transformations of landscape, as they can be imagined in de Chirico's characteristic deserted cityscapes. According to Koka Ramishvili, they are models to capture the light, therefore giving them the name light engines. They were created by him to be photographed with a Leica M Monochrome (type 246) camera. This device does not capture the color spectra RGB, but countless variations and gradations of gray. The image Orpheus’ Harp provides a conceptual bridge to the group of Lost Landscape images and the Horizon series. The non-representational landscape becomes the strings of Orpheus' harp.

Koka Ramishvili – H O R I Z O N