In his exhibition at Gladstone 64, Georgian artist Andro Wekua presents a series of new paintings that continue upon his multimedia approach in articulating familiar yet strange, specific yet ambiguous representations of memory. Utilizing processes of layering, silk-screening, and collaging with oils, charcoals, and pencils, Wekua builds upon many layered surfaces to bring forth complex narratives that combine facets of history, geography, fantasy, and memory into physically and conceptually dense compositions.
These impenetrable characters and spaces, borne from both universal and deeply personal places and experiences, do not allow for strict interpretation but require a deeper look into the universal condition. Working across various physical mediums – such as painting, sculpting, drawing, filmmaking, installation – and his own feelings and understandings, Wekua’s expansive body of work questions and visualizes the intersections of recent history and psychological space. Deeply personal and bursting with vibrant greens, blues, and yellow fields, Wekua reconfigures elements and subjects from earlier works offering the viewer a complex web of artifacts to be untangled and excavated with each presentation of the artist’s work.
In this exhibition, Wekua continues upon his painting practice with a series of works on canvas and aluminum panel. Set amidst wholly abstracted landscapes, figures float and dangle within the confines of geometric space. The otherwise abstract forms are reminiscent of lava, carrying discernable forms, like palm leaves, human limbs, flames, complex geometric shapes, and complementing fields and blotches of color. Faces and human figures stare longingly back at the viewer or just outside of frame. Each surface is layered with heavy yet delicate expanses of tactile paint, alluding to a progression of time and time-based process that transcends the confines of each final image. Wekua’s ongoing reinterpretation of scenes and images that have helped define his oeuvre suggest a recurring impulse to bring renewed structure and understanding to the past in order to find alternative outcomes.
