Levan Songulashvili: Triptychos

The Georgian National Museum is delighted to be presenting Levan Songulashvili’s solo exhibition, Triptychos. The exhibition spans three rooms in the museum, comprised of drawings, murals, installation works, sound, and a painting.

Triptychos, curated by Basak Senova, unfolds itself by constituting a plotted assembly in three stages and settings. Each room was designed to give a detailed account of the artist’s work and working methodology through a concealed narrative. Triptychos subtly and inclusively follows stages of a personal story of the artist’s recent struggle with an imminent death as a compelling reflection of this process. Hence, Songulashvili never mentions or depicts “death” directly in the exhibition, yet he builds up a journey throughout these three rooms while silently bridging his experience with the imagination, perception, and personal experiences of the viewer. The journey ends with a large-scale painting and with his words about the painting: “abstract shapes, figurative elements, dynamic brushstrokes in a bright palette; pixel-like figures create a puzzle of the whole universe through a bird-eye view. For me the past, present, and the future spin in a circle in this painting.”

The exhibition is made possible by generous support from the Window Project—a Tbilisi-based contemporary art gallery—which presents Songulashvili.

Levan Songulashvili (1991, Tblisi) is a Georgian visual artist who graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts. He was granted several educational scholarships and holds an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. German and French philosophy and psychoanalysis have influenced his artistic approach and led him to new creative experiments and conceptual research since the beginning of his art venture. His work engages with symbolism and abstract expressions observing and reflecting on the states of being conscious and unconscious. He deals allusively with a sense of boundary and transition, the immersive nature of the world, the idea of flow and flux.

Songulashvili’s multimedia works, murals, and paintings have been exhibited in numerous venues across North America, the UK, and Europe such as the Royal Academy of Arts, London, Saatchi Gallery, Sotheby’s, and are held in public and private collections worldwide including the Rustaveli National Theatre and Brooklyn Museum. He has been granted many awards and residencies in Georgia, Singapore, and Germany.

Basak Senova, who worked in close collaboration with the artist, is the first international curator invited by the Georgian National Museum. Senova curated the pavilions of Turkey and North Macedonia at the Venice Biennale in 2009 and 2015, among other international biennials and exhibitions. She developed and curated the CrossSections project (2017–2019); acts as the Turkish correspondent of Flash Art International and is a member of the editorial board of Pass—the International Biennial Association’s journal. Currently, she is a Visiting Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, running the Octopus Programme.

For more information, media requests or further inquiries about the show and the artist, please contact Lela Tsitsuashvili at info@museum.ge.