Meet the artist
"Once I realized how important and expressive a shadow could be for me; what a shadow can say. Since then shadows and three-dimensional shapes started to appear in all my paintings. Before my works were more figurative and expressive; inventing shadow motives has transformed them into more abstract visions. (...)
At its essence I believe that art must produce emotional reactions. These first reactions can later grow into deep feelings; a sharing and communication between the artist and the viewer. That’s the moment when art works."
At its essence I believe that art must produce emotional reactions. These first reactions can later grow into deep feelings; a sharing and communication between the artist and the viewer. That’s the moment when art works."
Merab Surviladze, extract from interview "Ever moving shadow that inspires me", Personal structures, Venice Art Biennial, 2019
Figurative and Naive period
1992-2011
Initially he created works of the naivite type, which represented grotesque and expressive patterns of national motives. He himself sees the explanation for this in the sentiments of the first period of emigration. Since the 1990s, he has lived in Brussels, and in the works of this time "signs of national culture have also been introduced, albeit without ideological pathos. I saw these grotesque men in chokes, I was interested in geraldics, romance with the past. In the first stages of emigration, this was probably understandable... Figurative works, e.BC. Naive, all the time attracted attention in the west, maybe alien to the place, exotic, and that attracted.
Discover some of my previous works
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Transition to the "shadow" motif
2012-2014
Those who are familiar with Merab's painting know also about the serious change that occurred in his painting.
Discover some of my previous works
Merab surviladze says that he does not have verbal comments on the news outside, he does not feel the need to express his thoughts, he reacts with images and these reactions are exactly what he sees. And what does the viewer see? Merab surviladze creates an original version of abstract painting, the conceptual basis of which is the shadow metaphor and its artistic-philosophical expansion. Relief mini-sculptures ‘emerging’ from the canvas are of different sizes and scales: in some places they look like groups of small men, in others they look like cosmic bodies shunned by a natural wave. Chaos and natural forces are the primary motive, manifested in different formats, tones and intensities. Expressive painting of Merab surbadze is a kind of riddle, which impresses the viewer with its unexpected visual and technical manner of execution. At first glance, similar canvases, where we seem to find different variations of one theme, also include elements of the narrative, behind which different stories are meant.
Anonymous, similar silhouettes are only perceived at a distance as a homogeneous mass, at close range each symbolizing an individual existence, to which one only turns the dimension of the shadow into the same. In his works Merab surbadze seems to ask a question about the phenomenon of shadow, its possible meanings: what happens to the body when it transforms into a shadow? Is it just a process of color transformation, when a colored given turns into a black or gray untrated silhouette, or are the shadow ‘demons ' expelled from internal processes? Is the shadow inseparable from the body, or can it exist independently? The main effect, on the other hand, that his canvases create seems to be shots of particles scattered by the force of natural currents, resembling the visual aesthetics of images depicting space systems.
Today Merab surviladze is an artist of Shadows and overlooks, - in his works you will immediately recognize the author. The silhouette-volumes on the textured canvases slowly turned into miniature sculptures, followed by new themes-for example., A uniformed version of anonymous characters, as ambiguous and enigmatic as all works on the theme of Shadows and overlooks. The character of these "three-dimensional" paintings is determined by the striving to rise from the surface, where figures created jewelically with paint are more and more trying to become independent sculptures. Probably, new experiments are expected from Merab surbiladze, this time with the medium of sculpture.
Shadows
2015-2023
Merab surviladze's latest work is openly ambiguous and a response to social motives intensified during the pandemic. The Mastercard is a large canvas, repeating the iconography of the famous logo, resembling a bank card of giant size, on which small figures of people walk and move like on the streets of a megalopolis emptied by a pandemic. Merab surbiladze loves contrasts in scales, angles, textures and volumes. The contrast is more ironic this time than in other earlier works, the theme of the famous brand, whose laconic and colorful logo should only radiate positive, create the illusion of enjoying life and feeling of stability, this time looks "suspicious" and is turned into a square of chaotic movements.
Discover some of my previous works
Merab surviladze says that he does not have verbal comments on the news outside, he does not feel the need to express his thoughts, he reacts with images and these reactions are exactly what he sees. And what does the viewer see? Merab surviladze creates an original version of abstract painting, the conceptual basis of which is the shadow metaphor and its artistic-philosophical expansion. Relief mini-sculptures ‘emerging’ from the canvas are of different sizes and scales: in some places they look like groups of small men, in others they look like cosmic bodies shunned by a natural wave. Chaos and natural forces are the primary motive, manifested in different formats, tones and intensities. Expressive painting of Merab surbadze is a kind of riddle, which impresses the viewer with its unexpected visual and technical manner of execution. At first glance, similar canvases, where we seem to find different variations of one theme, also include elements of the narrative, behind which different stories are meant.
Anonymous, similar silhouettes are only perceived at a distance as a homogeneous mass, at close range each symbolizing an individual existence, to which one only turns the dimension of the shadow into the same. In his works Merab surbadze seems to ask a question about the phenomenon of shadow, its possible meanings: what happens to the body when it transforms into a shadow? Is it just a process of color transformation, when a colored given turns into a black or gray untrated silhouette, or are the shadow ‘demons ' expelled from internal processes? Is the shadow inseparable from the body, or can it exist independently? The main effect, on the other hand, that his canvases create seems to be shots of particles scattered by the force of natural currents, resembling the visual aesthetics of images depicting space systems.
Today Merab surviladze is an artist of Shadows and overlooks, - in his works you will immediately recognize the author. The silhouette-volumes on the textured canvases slowly turned into miniature sculptures, followed by new themes-for example., A uniformed version of anonymous characters, as ambiguous and enigmatic as all works on the theme of Shadows and overlooks. The character of these "three-dimensional" paintings is determined by the striving to rise from the surface, where figures created jewelically with paint are more and more trying to become independent sculptures. Probably, new experiments are expected from Merab surbiladze, this time with the medium of sculpture.
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