Andro Wekua

Gladstone Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Georgian artist Andro Wekua. Utilizing art-historical subject matter such as floral still lifes, reclining figures, and portraiture, Wekua imbues his works with a layered psychology that joins the past with the complexities of individual experience. In these paintings, the artist examines the liminal space between individual subjectivity and universal understanding, using imagery, process, and formal strategy to craft a charged emotional landscape. The artist's collage-like surfaces recall Modernist pictorial construction while remaining firmly rooted in a contemporary sensibility, resulting in images that are both urgent and timeless. Eschewing the strictures of formal tradition and the confines of narrative, Wekua's work exists in a half-light, a psychic geography where the past skids against the present. Rendered in richly pigmented layers of oil and charcoal on linen, the works in this exhibition depict attenuated blooms and enigmatic figures oscillating between abstraction and figuration. Wekua’s subjects seem to emerge as if excavated from the medium itself, appearing from within an ether of layered paint application. His generalized sitters evoke a mysterious power and emotion, while roses, fruit, and tablescapes subtly subvert a lineage of European genre painting, playing on ideas of beauty and legibility. Each work evades easy categorization by virtue of its construction; oblique, geometric mark-making and passages of shifting opacity and luminous translucency create a slippage between familiar forms and new ones. Claiming territory between the observed and the imagined, Wekua’s paintings invite reconsideration of how images are constructed and of the emotional and historical implications they carry. Andro Wekua (b. 1977, Sokhumi, Georgia) lives and works between Zurich and Berlin. Wekua studied visual arts at the National Art School, Sokhumi, Georgia, Philippine Institute "Gogebashvili," Tbilisi, Georgia, and the Visual Art School in Basel, Switzerland. Solo museum exhibitions include Strangers in Paraise, Art & History Museum, Belgium (2023); Dolphin in the Foundation, Tank Shanghai, China (2022); Drift Angle, Take Ninagawa, Japan (2021); Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (2018); Dolphin in the Foundation, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2018); Andruf, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2016); Kunsthalle Wien, Austria (2011); Never Sleep with a Strawberry in Your Mouth, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Germany (2011); A Neon Shadow, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy (2011); Workshop Report, Wiels, Brussels (2009); Museion, Bolzano, Italy (2009); Wait to Wait, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2007); I'm sorry if I'm not very funny tonight, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2006); That would have been wonderful, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Switzerland (2004); Camden Arts Center, London; the De Hallen Haarlem, Netherlands; Le Magasin, Grenoble, France; and the Benaki Museum, Athens. He has participated in various group shows including Illuminations at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); Contemplating the Void at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2010); 10,000 Lives at the 8th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2010); Life on Mars: 55th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2008), and the 4th Berlin Biennial (2006).

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