Gogi Chagelishvili “Carnival”
April – May, 2025
68 Razmadze Street
Baia Gallery presents Gogi Chagelishvili’s new project Carnival, and would like to invite you to the opening of the show on April 10, 2025, 7:00 pm at the Vake branch of the gallery (68 Andria Razmadze Street).
The main focus of the new project lies with the carnivalization of events and offers a culmination of all features that have always characterized the artist’s work: distancing from reality, rejection of its standard models, aesthetic personification and surrealistic nuances, and perception of life as a festive and theatrical performance. This happens through the introduction of the audience to a colorful process of carnival and its textural grotesque performance.
The artist depicts the characters of Carnival wearing the mask – one of the most popular attributes of both the ancient and modern worlds that unites large informational and symbolic contexts through showing the meaning of historical, social, and cultural positions.
A mask evokes a variety of associations, sometimes turning from a magical or religious ritual attribute into an object of theatrical representation, through becoming part of a cultural and social universe, sometimes acquiring a status of political accessory. The mask is one of the most common artistic images of interpretation and status.
The topic of a carnival and a mask generates numerous layers of associations in the field of culture and social environment, the real and virtual worlds. It gives birth to endless emotional and conceptual signals of covering the obvious, creating a simulacrum, social standardization, choosing a role and playing, ultimately transforming the reality it represents into a meta event.
The mask and the carnival – ancient archetypal objects of transformation of personality and events in Gogi Chagelishvili’s new project Carnival will be on display at the Baia Gallery from April 10 to May 10, 2025.