Possible worlds of Zurab Tsereteli Automatic translate

“Perhaps in this world you are only a man, but for someone you are the whole world” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “100 Years of Solitude”.

To build images, playing with styles, plunge into the labyrinths of mythology and return, impose fantasies on real life scenes, compose “possible” worlds - character traits of Zurab Tsereteli’s art.

Tsereteli’s paintings are metaphorical, invariably speaking the language of the parable, as if they were parts of a large-scale picture of the world. The plots seem to be extremely simple, they tell about life in its most ordinary manifestation, but are told with some epic power-law significance. The invariably large sad eyes of people, dogs, horses, birds resemble a painted space of life with deep chords of experiences. For the artist’s works, it’s difficult to determine the style, one specific direction. Each will always see something of his own. In their compositional structure, the paintings are like living dreams - sometimes black and white, sometimes colored. It is difficult to say which technique the master prefers, it seems that it depends on the mood and on the availability at hand of one or another material capable of visualizing the images that arose in the head.

From the series - I was born a gardener

At the same time, as the main goal of creativity, as a super task, in his works the presence of a certain positive gene remains unshakable, it is impossible not to succumb to the charm of cordial, open heroes.

Tsereteli creates his reality. There are plots, and they are not. The composition, as a rule, is complex, multifaceted, in it the narrative is almost completely overcome and turned into a plastic event. When you see how their author begins to lead the line with a confident hand, perplexity arises at the first moment. Indeed, how can a shoe be the first to appear in a person’s figure, besides taking a central place in a composition with a rhinestone? Then a part of the leg to the knee appears, and in the other part of the canvas, without any connection, the head and arm. But everything falls into place when in five minutes it may turn out that not one figure is conceived, but two, or maybe ten. The wizard often fills the entire space of the sheet, practically leaving no free space. The composition is always characterized by a certain sophisticated complexity, which at the same time feels very organic. The canvases usually have many points of view, they are saturated with movement, combined “at the same time at different times”, as Vladimir Favorsky characterized a similar approach.

LIRA WITH OLYMPUS

Tsereteli’s space is a kind of accumulator of emotions, here the voids are filled with juicy strokes that form a monumental mosaic. Each of the polyhedra of this mosaic is “possible” worlds, the boundaries of which the artist crosses and carries the viewer along.

Borders - an interesting topic for the art of Tsereteli, especially with regard to his painting. The beads of the canvas border, what could be more definite?! But if you look at many canvases, and there are several thousand of them, we will see how the images do not fit into the given frames, how the hand goes beyond the line or the head rests directly on the edge of the frame, as if in a low ceiling, and there are many such examples. Most of the figures are like fabulous giants who have outgrown the house in which they still lived. Or there is a feeling that the space is large, and the drawing, its borders is a small window into the vast world. The horizon is high, and the foreground figures are always large-scale, almost obscuring it. They look like epic heroes - heroes, although this is just a wandering musician, fishmonger or just a lonely wanderer, wandering wherever his eyes look.

Album sheets

The combination of the incompatible, fantasy, dream, reality, reality, absolute reality - this is a stable figurative structure, which remains a kind of constant for Tsereteli. The mysterious codes of the culture of the Caucasus, sounding either as absolute reality or as a legend in the poem “The Knight in the Tiger Skin”, can serve both as the main source of knowledge of life and as a theme for creativity. A sad organ-grinder, violinist, kinto, bath attendant - a motley crowd, making up a series of characters of Tbilisi leaving. The next canvas, replaced by a full of folklore enthusiasm, is replaced by a different story, which is hidden behind the semantic and visual layering of the image.

It is important to note the general striving for images of primitive nature, proto-man, for beauty devoid of pathos, brilliance, gloss, to the beginning, which should symbolize the truth. The history of the world is also significant for the universe, as is the history of the little man, his aspirations. Often it is in contrast, with a sense of a certain dissonance, that the main topic suddenly opens up, the very essence of something very global, that very “beginning of everything”, for which, perhaps, man was created. Here I would like to recall the famous film “Do not Cry!” By George Danelia, in which the heroes experience laughter through tears, and the joy of life in one second turns into a tragedy.

Croatia. 2012

For Tsereteli’s art, a graphic and energetic environment is characteristic of the so-called "magic realism." The length of time, its distortion or apparent absence, the movement "back to the future", the importance of the most insignificant details, the return of almost sacred value to everyday objects. The past contrasts with the present, the astral with the physical, the characters with each other. The visual ellipsis of the work allows the viewer to determine for himself what was more truthful and relevant to the structure of the world - fantastic or everyday. In the works of Zurab Tsereteli, an unexpected connection often occurs, and sometimes interconversion of different objects, human figures, animals, fish, birds and architectural structures, which forms a bright plastic image of the canvas as a whole. We see, feel that each sheet of paper or canvas has many dimensions and spatial breakthroughs that overcome the borders of the sheet, and at the same time remain in harmony with these boundaries. The imaginary chaos, the layering of different plans, the hypertrophy of the interpretation of the form, nevertheless, gives a general impression of the harmony of life, with its sharp “corners”, “burrs”, “bumps”, all the texture that makes it up.

Centuries-old folk culture, national variations of the traditions of merrymaking, laughter culture, a return to the original, not false, genuine through grotesque, laughter, for the sake of revealing a hidden, closed, unknown, but real world - all this can be found in almost every painting or drawing of Zurab Tsereteli. Romantic fantasy merges with everyday life and sometimes triumphs over it, professing an unshakable faith in goodness - these are the super tasks of magical realism, and they organically coincide with the artistic concept of Tsereteli’s art.

CHARLIE CHAPLIN. 2004

Grotesque is one of the characteristic properties of Tsereteli’s art. Do not find portraits where the artist, as he himself says, would not "exaggerate" the real nature. At the same time, the recognition of most portraits is almost one hundred percent. “Every good portrait,” said Ingres, “must have in itself something of a caricature.” An artist writes or paints an image of a seemingly real person, but the apparent similarity is not an end in itself for him. True satisfaction is brought to the master by another sensation, which he formulates as “to catch the character”.

“Art - cannot be real without a bit of the surreal. I have always felt that beauty is the opposite. I don’t know how to explain this to you… Remember what our planet looks like. We soar in space and do not fall. What is this, not a dream? ”Marc Chagall

Transforming tradition, relying on national roots, Tsereteli strives for the synthesis of reality and myth, its close interweaving into artistic "fabrics". A fantasy world is a world of emotions with many shades, a holistic, vibrant and multifaceted image. The emotional overtones of an image can be interpreted both as a concrete thing, and as a symbol, and as a supersensible, metaphysical phenomenon. Playing with time and incredible reality, permeated with the ideas of kindness and love for people - this is the method of revealing the existence of the world in “magical realism” and the most obvious creative line of Tsereteli.

The master enthusiastically comprehends the plastic nature and metaphysical essence of the objects depicted. He builds a complex system of allusions and associations, uses the direct and allegorical meaning of things in general to “narrate” about human life, about different fates, about the beauty of life. Many characters and objects in the drawings act as if by the principle of a kaleidoscope - with each movement of the hand, intricate compositional variations appear on the sheet.

Some images gravitate towards visual codes, sometimes representing in the form of a sign, then a more verbose symbol. Among the most common images are cards, candles, as a symbol of hope, human life and, sadly, death, too; fish - "birds of the earth", symbols of Christ; many of the signs that make up the visual culture of many millennia. In the drawings, as well as in the paintings, it is the fish more often than all other creatures and objects that fill, as if by accident, the voids on the sheet: either a basket of fish appears, then a rope on which the fish crashes, then the fish is on the table, and then under the table in the paws of a mischievous cat. As a result, a feeling of a certain chain of events is created.

Before a careful look, a series of images passes, which allows each of the drawings to break out of the scope of the usual genre sketch. Whatever the plot, in the majority of drawings you will definitely find mock-ups of churches and a chapel, a lone cross in the mountains or in the midst of a hectic pile of houses in a bustling city. In the city or on the way, a fish merchant is sure to meet, and closer to the sea - a fisherman. Placed in a drawing with intent or unconsciously, such “signs” bring the whole variety of plots, characters, characters, types and angles into a single whole, referring to a certain comprehensive biblical scale. If we talk about topics in the artist’s art, these are “Man and Woman”, “Man and Nature”, “God and Man”, “Man and His Character”. These global themes, combining both biblical history and the folk wisdom of fairy tales, saturate all of Tsereteli’s work and continue that amazing line that ultimately combines the art of almost all eras known to the world. There is an invisible line of the heart that connects worlds and continents, revealing the perception of the world as a large creative workshop, where any topic, any hero can not be uninteresting because he lives in this world.

There is a strong hypothesis that in the creative life of every great artist there is a special motive, which he seeks to reveal in each of his works. To express himself, Zurab Tsereteli walked along different roads, his lines of life were tightly intertwined into a single knot, whose name is art. What theme can be called the main one, and can it embrace the whole space of his life and work? Someone will say - the theme of Love, Faith, Goodness will be right. However, looking at the master’s works, you are convinced that his main theme is life itself in its momentary sketches and monumental canvases of eternity, in its chamber and sometimes devastatingly grandiose scale. And every day, saturating the palette with a portion of fresh colors, the master begins to rediscover possible worlds that are accessible only to the artistic dimension.

art critic, Tatyana Kochemasova