28 October 2022

Artist Feature: Elene Chantladze

Elene Chantladze Untitled, 2021 Mixed media on cardboard 36 × 44 cm (14 1/8 × 17 3/8 inches)

The team at BLOK would like to thank to the Artist, Lisa Offermann and Gvantsa Jgushia from LC Queisser gallery in Tbilisi for their generous help and their permission to present the works of Elene Chantladze on our website.

Elene Chantladze (b.1946, Supsa, Georgia) is a self-taught artist based in the former balneological resort of Tskaltubo, Georgia. In contradiction to the conventional style of living in a rather pragmatic environment, Chantladze has always occupied herself with artistic affairs, such as producing diaristic entries all her life, writing poetry, and children’s stories, while actively involved in a local writers’ club. Her practice began later in her life, prompted by gathering beach pebble stones and other discarded materials and feeling the urge to paint them. Being extremely resourceful, reusing scraps of cardboard and paper from product packaging and old documents from an abandoned hospital, she paints with fingers or matchsticks dipped in food extracts from her garden or coffee stains. Her practice includes painting over the black & white xerox copies of her previous works. In terms of the medium and subject matter, her entire process revolves around improvisation and spontaneity; thus, Chantladze’s paintings radiate an expressionistic nature and playful approach. Though the Tskaltubo-based artist has been distanced from fast-paced global narratives, she has faced and rebelled against Soviet bureaucracies and its imposed constructs. Observing the scenes of her rural daily normalcy and memories with her family, sometimes imaginary, Elene relentlessly paints daily, transforming the usual scenarios into mythical narratives on the verge of figurative and abstract.

Elene Chantladze lives and works in Tskaltubo, Georgia. Her recent solo exhibitions include Fierman, New York (2022); Modern Art, London (2021); LC Queisser, Tbilisi (2020); Gallery Nectar, Tbilisi (2018). Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at Ermes Ermes, Rome (2022); Lismore Castle Arts, (2022); Croy Nielsen, Vienna (2022); ADZ Gallery, Lisbon (2021); Conceptual Fine Arts, Milan (2021); Gallery Nectar, Tbilisi (2015); Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel (2015).

The team at BLOK would like to thank to the Artist, Lisa Offermann and Gvantsa Jgushia from LC Queisser gallery in Tbilisi for their generous help and their permission to present the works of Elene Chantladze on our website.

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See also

Collecting Contemporary Folklore

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Everyone and Everything Deserves Respect, Some Form of Understanding, to Be Given a Chance

Tracing and Reworking the Erased Past

Mythmaking Has a Potential to be Critical

About the Konrad and Paweł Jarodzki International Artists-in-Residence Programme