OFLUXO

The Why Not Gallery is pleased to present Gvantsa Jishkariani’s eighth solo exhibition ‘I Dream of Fire’.
 

The artist turns the gallery space into a dreamy landscape, where textures, scents and sounds create a unified sensory experience and invite the viewer to travel through forms and materials, sensations and associations.

In this seemingly magical spectacle, there is a strong sense of dissonance – the leading element of the exhibition is fire – as a substance, as an energy, as a symbol and as a potential. Fire features in almost every artwork, be it a visual representation or a physical residue. Emblems of destruction, violence, aggression, fear and renewal create a strangely pleasing sight, as if echoing the collective subconscious.

Today, when Europe is engulfed in the flames of war, it is difficult not to connect the exhibition to the existing context. It could be read as a reflection or even a premonition.

Gvantsa Jishkariani:

“Coming to this exhibition, I want the spectator to go up the trail and look at the forest floor from above, like ruins, joyously discovered and forgotten by the city. I want you to hear the muted sounds and smell the fire.

Some of you will enter this forest and while walking carefully, you will make small discoveries along the way. You will collect beautiful sights just as I have collected each of these images from my memories, books, documentaries, news broadcasts, and dreams.

May this journey be a remedy for your many times forgotten and sometimes recollected past, for people we only remember as snapshots, burnt diaries, wars lost, unfelt happiness, and be it a celebration of remembrance, of rebirth and of multiple births, and of miles flown with burnt wings. ‘