ART CITIES:Berlin-Thea Djordjadze
Combining traditional materials of sculpture such as plaster and wood with everyday objects, Thea Djordjadze creates installations of sculptural objects that are sited to respond to one another and the space of their installation. Her work is characterized by tensions between materials and forms. Geometric constructions drawn from modernist architecture and design are exhibited together with clay sculptures and carpets that reveal their status as handmade.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Sprüth Magers Gallery Archive
Thea’s Djordjadze, sculptural installations combine constructed and found elements into intuitive arrangements, some of these are reused from one exhibition to another, running through her work like a continuous thread. With their striking psychological depth and unique physical impact, Djordjadze’s installations have an inimitable effect on the viewer. Her new installation “listening the pressure that surrounds you”, at Sprüth Magers in Berlin has an atmospheric flair, fusing presumably familiar elements from Djordjadze’s work. Painted glass objects recall her 2008 intervention at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Two dark wall sculptures with rusted interiors have the look of paintings – closer inspection reveals them to be planters from her installation at the 56th Venice Biennale. Djordjadze’s installations have to do with temporary and site-specific concepts of an archeology of the interior, an archeology of atmospheres, of the half-conscious, of space-turned-memory. These interiors are not governed by the same laws as others, which is precisely what makes the viewer aware of how she or he normally moves through space. They dissect the cultural practices of the interior and resonate with our collective dreams. They allow the stability and fragility of objects to lead our intuition astray, challenge mental projections only to let them fail and cause the viewer to measure the room like a cartographer. Djordjadze’s dissonant materials and their expansive effect assume the language of bricolage, assemblage and collage articulated at the beginning of the modern age, when everyday objects found their way into art for the first time. But Djordjadze takes bricoleur to the extreme. Her version alters architectural space, challenging the visual clarity and inherent wholeness of the individual objects. The installation’s vocabulary seems to oscillate between architectural history, Minimalism and Conceptual art. The parallels are never explicit, the references never more than a hint. Instead they are more of an unconscious manifestation of memories.
Info: Sprüth Magers Gallery, Oranienburger Straße 18, Berlin, Duration: 30/4-25/6/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.spruethmagers.com
