“Tamuna Sirbiladze: Sculpting in Color” at Artbeat, Tbilisi

“Tamuna Sirbiladze: Sculpting in Color” shows the artist’s late paintings and drawings. The presented body of work had been created from the years 2005-14, during the artist’s short visits in Tbilisi. Tamuna Sirbiladze was born in Tbilisi, Georgia where she attended State Academy of Arts before relocating to Vienna to continue her studies in Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and later Slade School in London. Over the decades of her career Tamuna created a large body of work involving paintings and drawings as well as installation, video and performance. She often collaborated with her husband Franz West (1947-2012) on a number of projects.

It is interesting that the work shown in the exhibition “Tamuna Sirbiladze: Sculpting in Color” can not be read in sequence. Rather it is tied to her main process in a fragmented manner due to the geographical distance and the pause between the dates of their creation. Despite this, each work is united by the artist’s personal language, which shows itself through bold gestural lines and the iconoclastic approach towards the medium. Tamuna’s visual language is intuitive and rapid. At a fast pace she moves between figuration and abstraction, painting and drawing and between cerebral approach and expressive marks. To quote the artist herself—“One way or another, my pictures should always be flexible.”

at Artbeat, Tbilisi
until December 11, 2022