Artist’s biographical note
Levan Songulashvili (b. 1991) is a Georgian-born New York-based visual artist; painter, draughtsman, installation and multimedia video artist.
Award-winning works and multimedia installations are shown in art galleries, private collections, and museums worldwide, including the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Museum and The Rustaveli National Theater. He have collaborated with Turner Prize-winning artist – Jeremy Deller, American rock star – Iggy Pop, Japanese fashion designer – Issey Miyake, photographer – Yuriko Takagi, composer – Giya Kancheli; Work has been exhibited alongside pieces by Egon Schiele, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Marina Abramović, Spencer Tunick, Yoko Ono, Odd Nerdrum, among others.
Songulashvili began painting in early childhood. At the age of 19, after the artist’s solo show in Georgia, he was invited to Germany as part of the art project. The western culture, German and French philosophy and psychoanalysis has influenced the young artist’s world view, and he proceeded to new creative experiments and conceptual research on his return to Georgia, which was a beginning of a new stage in his art.
At the age of 21, he won several merit scholarships and art prizes and became the first Georgian artist who earned his Master’s (M.F.A.) degree with honors from The New York Academy of Art (founded by Andy Worhol) in Painting. After graduation he was TA for ‘Art & Culture’ MFA course at the same university.
In 2018, the artist’s works were presented in the group exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts ahead of the venue’s 250th anniversary and ‘Art Geneve’, Switzerland, followed by his art residency show in Berlin, Germany.
The idea of mutability and possession of an independent sense of emergent identity is of great concern to Songulashvili, particularly as it relates to the recent re-emergence of Georgia as an independent and autonomous state in 1991 — the year of the artist’s birth.
STYX & System of Objects
In 2018, Songulashvili had his extensive autonomous exhibition ‘The STYX‘ curated by Mark Gisbourne (former President of the British Art Critics Association) in two gallery spaces at The ERTI. The ambitious show included a series of paintings and film installations devoted to the self-regenerative medusozoa jellyfish. In the second space there was another projected video three-wall environmental installation ‘The System of Objects‘, filmed in the Guggenheim Museum and newly completed Oculus in New York. The work also incorporated an extensive and innovative foreground receding sculptural component. The overall theme of the exhibition was that of ‘passage’ and life journey, very much in line with philosopher-anthropologist Joseph Campbell’s famous historical anthropology of ‘The Hero’s Journey’, from life to death, ignorance to enlightenment, from day to night, and that of eternal return.
For Songulashvili this served as both a universal metaphor and creative theme, and also, perhaps, as an extended simile of the artist’s own evolving life experience to date.
Idem et Idem
Songulashvili’s monumental stage installation ‘IDEM ET IDEM‘ was presented for living legend composer, Giya Kancheli’s historical concert with world premiere. Inspired by one of Songulashvili’s painting series the composer entitled his latest musical piece for choir and chamber orchestra with the same name.
Synesthesia
Songulashvili’s experimental performance ‘Synesthesia‘ was held at the Rustaveli National Theater / New Kimerioni. The artist’s experimental-performative project combined two fundamental blending forms: visual and hearing Synesthesia perception. The performance manifested through total improvisation and spontaneity. Songulashvili’s large-scale piece created during the performance is on permanent view at the Rustaveli National Theatre hall.
Frankfurt Book Fair
The monograph of Songulashvili’s work ‘The STYX’ co-authored by Mark Gisbourne was shortlisted and presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2018, the world’s largest trade fair for books.
Songulashvili has received a number of national and international awards, including The President’s award, The Prime-Minister’s award, and the New York State Assembly award for Achievements and Contribution to the Arts.
He also writes psychological prose, essays, verses and plays the piano.
Levan Songulashvili explains his work by saying:
‘I care about the mysteries of Life, its origins, its endless cycles and regenerations and I question the current civilization in which we find ourselves and wonder: what will be the future of Humankind? What is problematic for scientists is fascinating for me.’
Artistic practice
The paintings of Levan Songulashvili engage with powerful and abstracted themes relates to the prescient concerns of passage and presence. That is to say from states of consciousness to the unconscious. He deals allusively with a sense of boundary and transition, the immersive nature of the world, the psychical element of water, the idea of flow and flux.
As an artist he holds a mastery of affect and transience, having created painted works consisting of large-scale canvases that feature large expanses of grey-black washes infused with an otherworldly light; vast tonal shifts; and a primordial glow that hovers between the mythic and the bioluminescent, which also evoke feelings of the underworld, phantom-like blurred apparitions, images of the so-called ‘Shades’ (Umbra), faces or presences that exist in an interstitial reality, an in between world of spectral dreams.
His use of sepia, white, grey, and black ties in with a long history of black and white art (paintings and graphics) that has sought to bring inner clarity to creative forms of expression. The use of colour is dependent all but totally on light while black and white are absolute polarities. It therefore also touches upon matter related to popular film, video, photography, and specifically the polemic at the beginnings of Western Art, namely darkness (Pliny’s drawing a line around a shadow), or light (Plato’s cave and the theory of reflection).
Songulashvili’s use of the medusa-like jellyfish imagery is an operative metaphor, they are not intended in any sense as to be taxonomic, depictions of accuracy for the purpose of classification, but as a poetic metaphor of life and sensory experience. Jellyfish are also creatures of continuous passage taken wherever the tides and prevailing winds drive them. At the same time as an artist he has undertaken two personal aspects of passage, his developmental life-passage as an artist-painter, and his increasingly extensive travel and experiences.
Bibliography
- Mark Gisbourne, Levan Songulashvili:The STYX, Erti (2018), ISBN 9789941800832
Education
2014—2017 Masters of Fine Arts / MFA
New York Academy of Art, New York, USA
2009—2013 Bachelor of Fine Arts / BA
Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, Tbilisi, Georgia
Artist in residence
2019 Singapore Art Residency, Singapore
2018—2017 68 Projects, Berlin, Germany
2018 Erti Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia
Public lectures
2018 — The Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (TSAA)
2018 — The Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University (BSU)
2018 — TA at The New York Academy of Art, ART & CULTURE 2018 MFA program
Frankfurt Book Fair
2018 — Monograph of the artwork “The STYX”, co-authored by Mark Gisbourne (former President of the British Art Critics Association), publisher: ERTI Gallery, Frankfurt, Germany
Exhibition history
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2018 ERTI Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia
2010 Art Hall, Tbilisi, Georgia
2009 N. Dumbadze State Theatre Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia
Selected Group Exhibitions
2018 “Black Sea”, 68 Projects / Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin, Germany
ArtGenève – Palexpo Geneva, Geneva Art Fair, Switzerland
TAF (Tbilisi Art Fair), Tbilisi, Georgia
“From Life”, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
2017 “Take Home a Nude 2017”, Sotheby’s, NY, USA
BWAC’s annual Black & White National Juried Exhibition, BWAC Gallery (Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition), NY, USA
Wilkinson Gallery, NY, USA
Tribeca Ball, NY, USA
2017 – 2016 “Iggy Pop Life Class”, Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA
2016 “Take Home a Nude 2016”, Sotheby’s, NY, USA
START Art Fair, SAATCHI Gallery, London, UK
Fourth Wall, BOOTH Gallery, NY, USA
ART16 Global Art Fair,Olympia, London, UK
Tribeca Ball, NY, USA
2015 “Take Home a Nude 2015”, Sotheby’s, NY, USA
Tribeca Ball, NY, USA
2014 Deck the Walls, Wilkinson Gallery, NY, USA
2013 Exhibition Hall of the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, Tbilisi, GeorgiaTSAA “NATO” Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia
2012 Tbilisi State Conservatory Art Hall, Tbilisi, Georgia
2011 Art exhibition at the Ministry of Sport of Georgia / Tbilisi, GeorgiaArt Academy Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia
2010 Exhibition Hall of A. Griboedov Theatre, Tbilisi, Georgia
Exhibition Hall of Tbilisi Medical Institute / Tbilisi, Georgia
National Library, Tbilisi, Georgia
2009 The National Youth Palace, Tbilisi, Georgia
Tbilisi Mayor’s Office, Tbilisi, Georgia
Elene Akhvlediani’s Art Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia
2007 Gallery HOBBY group exhibition, Tbilisi, Georgia
2006 The National Youth Palace, Tbilisi, Georgia
2005 The National Youth Palace, Tbilisi, Georgia
2004 The National Youth Palace, Tbilisi, Georgia
Awards & Nominations
Nominations
2016 – Ego Awards for “The Discovery of the Year”
2015 – Georgian Public Broadcaster’s Awards for “The Best Artist Of The Year”
Awards & Grants
2018 Artist of the Year 2017, ArtistADay
2017 People’s Choice, National Art Exhibition, BWAC Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition
The International Education Center (IEC) of Georgia’s Full Tuition Academic Scholarship Award
2016 New York State Assembly Award for achievements and contribution to Art
The International Education Center (IEC) of Georgia’s Full Tuition Academic Scholarship Award
2015 The International Education Center (IEC) of Georgia’s Full Tuition Academic Scholarship Award
New York Academy of Art Portrait Scholarship Award
2014 Academy Scholar Merit Award of the Admissions and Scholarship Committees
“Master and Doctoral Program” Full Tuition Scholarship Award, Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia (MES)
2013—2010 Tbilisi State Academy of Arts scholarship
2009—2013 Full Tuition Scholarship of the Ministry of Culture and Monuments Protection of Georgia
2012 International Certificate, international festival “Inter Art Batumi”
2011 Winner of JSC TBC Bank Scholarship for the Art Project in Germany
2010 Award and certificate of the Ministry of Education and Science for monumental painting as part of “Developing Inclusive Education at 9 Public Schools of Georgia” project of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia
National Library’s award for the successful participation in the open doors day
2008 Special prize and letter of appreciation for achievements from the President of Georgia
2008—2006 Awarded for successful participation in the Georgian Language Section of the Republican Educational and Art Conference
2007 Winner of I degree diploma at IV exhibition/competition of the Hobby Gallery
2006 Winner of I degree diploma at III exhibition/competition of the Hobby Gallery
National Youth Palace Fine Art Section award for active and successful participation in various exhibitions over years
2005 Winner of I degree diploma at II exhibition/competition of the Hobby Gallery
2004 Winner of I degree diploma at I exhibition/competition of the Hobby Gallery
2004 Winner of the international art competition “Niamori”
Publications, press & media
2017 Artists Working from Life (Royal Academy of Arts)
2017 AMARTA Magazine
2017 Artistaday.com
2017 LEVAN SONGULASHVILI, The Jellyfish (2016) – Paddle8
2016 Iggy Pop: Musician, Icon — and Now, Live Nude Model – The New York Times
2016 Levan Songulashvili – Young Georgian discovery of world art – Georgian Journal
2016 Raw power: why Iggy Pop posed naked for Jeremy Deller’s Life Class – The Guardian
2016 Georgia’s Levan Songulashvili among famous artists in Sotheby’s auction – Agenda.ge
2016 Levan Songulashvili’s “The Nun” sold at Take Home a Nude auction at Sotheby’s – Georgian Journal
2016 Creative artist Levan Songulashvili displays piece in New York – Agenda.ge
2016 Top London fair shines spotlight on two Georgian artists – Agenda.ge
2016 LEVAN SONGULASHVILI, The Nun (2012) – Paddle8
2016 Georgian artist Levan Songulashvili shines at Tribeca Ball in NY – Agenda.ge
2016 Studio Visit (A Juried Selection of International Visual Artists) volume 33
2016 Levan Songulashvili – Art People Gallery
2016 The Jellyfish in Manhattan – INDIGO Magazine
2015 I created “The Jellyfish” back in my native country, did not I?! – Kviris Palitra Magazine
2015 LEVAN SONGULASHVILI,The Jellyfish (2013) – Paddle8
2015 Levan Songulashvili Features at Sotheby’s Art Auction – CBW
2015 Georgia Today
2011 Public Encyclopedia “Faces & Names”
2011 TSAA art manual “Art of Painting”
2010 Georgian annual Encyclopedia Sakhelebi / “Faces & Names”
TV
Rustavi2 – Iggy Pop Life Class and Levan Songulashvili at the Brooklyn Museum (video in Georgian)
IMEDI TV documentary – “Visual Metaphor”, Levan Songulashvili (video in Georgian)
Georgian Public Broadcaster – The Best Georgian Artist Of The Year 2015
Music Box – Georgian Artist Levan Songulashvili
Georgian Public Broadcaster – Interview with Levan Songulashvili
Georgian Public Broadcaster / “The Communicator”, visual artist Levan Songulashvili
REAL TV
Maestro