From Darkness to Light is not only the title of my current exhibition at Vernissage Gallery in Tbilisi. It also describes a movement that has shaped much of my work: from memory into image, from the weight of history into colour, from the darkness of the Caucasian borderlands into a fragile, temporary light.
On the occasion of publishing my new catalog “In the Prison of Art” — 137 paintings from 30 years in Georgia — my gallerist Zaira Berelidze invited me to show eleven paintings on the Caucasus theme.
From dark and fast to colour and light
In my first years in Georgia I painted on smaller canvases, fast, with acrylic as background and oil for the figures. Over the decades, my palette has shifted — colour has become the main force for evoking mood and emotion. The exhibition traces this arc.
Several works are named after mountain passes: the Cross Pass on the Georgian Military Road, the Abano Pass into Tusheti, the Arkhoti Pass in Khevsureti at 3,201 meters — places I have crossed many times, and which still feel unpredictable each time.
A Horse Thief in New York
The motif of the horse thief occupied me for nearly a decade, from 2007 to 2017 — a figure between outlaw, survivor and legend. Horse Thief New York City (2016–17) began with a rider at Tabatskuri Lake, shifted to Lake Sevan with Ararat in the background, and finally landed in New York, with the Twin Towers still intact. In art, we are free to shift time and place, and hand new meanings over to the viewer’s imagination.
The Digital enters the canvas
With the arrival of cryptoart and NFTs in 2019, I made a great deal of digital work. In Land of the Pixel (2023), the movement went the other way — digital aesthetics found their way back into paint and canvas.
A monument to the temporary
The exhibition closes on June 17. The paintings will leave the walls, the white cube will become empty again — and the specific constellation of these eleven works will disappear.
This fragility is what led me to create THE ART GALLERY, a 3D digital sculpture of the exhibition space, minted as NFT on SuperRare — a cryptoart monument to something that cannot be preserved in any other way.
From Darkness to Light remains on view until June 17, 2026, at Vernissage Gallery, 36 Shota Rustaveli Ave, Tbilisi. Tuesday–Sunday, 12:00–19:00. All works are available — prices from $1,800 to $3,000.
