David Magradze: Sign and Dream

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Forte dei Marmi - 1 December 2015 - Vittoria Coen

David Magradze’s artistic work holds a powerful aesthetic appeal for the spectator: since the artist’s complex world abounds in references to art history, the first element that stands out being Pop, the same Pop Art that, appearing first in the United Kingdom, became very popular both in the USA and in the world at large.
David Magradze cleverly immerses himself in luxury fashion goods with the same ease with which he deals with oriental subjects of great charm (masks, to name one). The mass reproduction game, the same as the pop universe, is compelling. References crop up here and there to Shakespeare (Hamlet: one for all) and the English world (The Beatles), but the mask theme is what’s most striking, whether we mean real, traditional masks, or just self-portraits of the accompanying faces.

 

David Magradze - Offering

David Magradze – Offering

 

Animals , inanimate objects such as ties , femmes fatales: all emerge from the night and explode into a kaleidoscope of bright colours graphic that make me think of Erté , the elegance of form and style. This exhibition brings together some twenty recent works representing a syn¬thesis of the work of many years. Not a retrospective, then, but a snapshot of creation.
Another striking feature is the strong dualism and dialectic between individu¬ality and sociability. The mask, in the same way as the portrait, mimics the iconography of art , from theatre to painting. Both the representation of the intimate self and the Renaissance tradition of the mask, as well as a certain kind of emblematic portraiture (Titian’s Allegory of Prudence, for example), which often embodies the three ages of man.

 

David Magradze - Duality

David Magradze – Duality

 

The iconography of Magradze’s works looks intentionally suggestive of an ad¬vertising poster, but doesn’t certainly act as a vehicle for a particular “brand” as did the traditional posters (let’s think, for instance, of Campari and Depero); actually, it tends to maintain a style that mirrors the times we live in, notwith¬standing the presence of educated historical reminiscences.
The terse stylistic perfection, the wide range of bright, iridescent colours the artist uses, are the standing features of his work. From the dark, nocturnal backgrounds we see images that boldly appear, arise, while doubling them¬selves, multiplying their colours and assuming sometimes disturbing symbolic meanings. History, iconographic tradition, sometimes oriental reminiscences, and of course the theme Pop basic theme, along with the “glamour” of the world; an universe, we must add, the artist filters through a loosely intended conceptuality.

David Magradze - Face

David Magradze – Face

 

They are certainly fragments of what we all can see, but they are as well an interpretation of reality both faithful and free, as images of a suspended, timeless world, only one style of reference we are familiar with seems to char¬acterise them. Magradze’s goal seems to be to push the spectator to go and search for the real roots of existence. The technical elegance of his painting gesture seems to tend to ideals forms, even when we can read ironically some of his works. In a way, he believes in a sort of coexistence of images born from the same mental ideal, yet we never see the slightest hints of improvisation in his symphony of signs and colours. There must be absolutely no room for error or afterthought, his visual and painting scores stand always very clear in the mind.

 

Albeit the pictorial stroke tends to make the spectator feel sudden emotions, it never reveals the true origin of the idea. It’s a fact that, as Magradze avoids fads, he prefers to breathe and to narrate the spirit of his time, which we are still musing on and discussing, since History has not encoded and decanted it as yet. Albeit some guidelines and cultural references may prove helpful to us in our interpretation it is obvious that we’ll always be faced by those questions indispensable in a research that luckily do not require immediate answers.

 

 

David Magradze’s works will be exposed from 7th December 2015 at the Art Dynasty Gallery in Forte dei Marmi.

Contacts:
Art Dynasty Gallery
Via Barsanti, 2
(Piazzetta dei Marmi)
Forte dei Marmi
55042 Italy
+39 339 715 0137
fgr@du-pont.net
www.artdynasty.ch

 

 

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