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Andro Wekua is one of the most prominent and accomplished artists today. Born in 1977, the young Georgian artist who emigrated to and is currently residing in Zurich, has now become a true star of international fame. To possess one of his works would be reason to feel great pride for all collectors of contemporary art, even if it’s unfortunately not altogether easy to obtain one of his works. In fact, his gallery references, Barbara Gladstone from New York and Peter Kilchmann of Zurich distribute his marvellous artwork with a lot of selectivity. Apart from the extreme knowledge and vision on the part of the galleries that manage him, it’s important to know that at such a young age, Andro Wekua has achieved sales exceeding those within the art market: his sculptures already surpassed the 100 million dollar mark while his painted collages starting from 20 million dollars realised 50 million dollars. Solely because of his unique and autonomous work by every contemporary standard, Andro Wekua imposed himself in the international art-system within a short time, and already forms part of some of the most important collections in the world. Among these are Saatchi, Pinault, Rubell and also Dakis Joannou. Furthermore, like all extremely talented artists, he participated in the Prague Biennale in the section “Expanded Painting” which was highly appreciated and endeared, and successively at the Berlin Biennale where he obtained ultimate acknowledgement.
Andro Wekua is an artist with a traumatic past in which he had to abandon Georgia with his mother (his father died in the war) at the end of the eighties. He grew up in Switzerland as a refuge. These biographical dates are essential towards understanding his art. Through sculpture, installations and pictoral drawings, Wekua confronts the theme of his journey and of his rebuilding. Through his creativity, the artist reconstructs his story, his childhood, redesigning – stemming from his memory and his dreams – his memories, those of a poor generation, but already contaminated by graffiti and comic books: the components of a contemporary juvenile generation. A sad romanticism can be seen in the universe of Wekua. The second personal show of the artist will be on exhibit until 29th March 2008 in the New York gallery Barbara Gladstone. The title of the event is “Blue Mirror” and gathers his new works: paintings, sculptures, collages and videos, which all together constitute a true and just installation; the space is divided into rooms, each of which have walls of a different colour. His paintings appear from these neutral backgrounds, which leave a lot of freedom for the silent wall.
The sculptures that commands the space in the rooms appear not to see, or rather, they don’t want to be seen; they escape the spectators’ stare folding into themselves, and hiding their face in the arms and hair. There is a sculpture of a black woman who’s sitting on a chair with her eyes closed and her legs outstretched in a restful pose. Observing her, one feels tired and maybe even a typical feeling of being human that is rendered vis-a-vis too many thoughts. In this work, one feels a particular sentiment that even a minimal object seems animated by man’s suffering. These works by Andro Wekua are a kind of mirror, possessing the capacity to make the public see a reflection of themselves. They speak to us and they make themselves understood. They leave us to face a strong sense of isolation typical of contemporary man: a figure that although is surrounded by a multitude of people, is separated from the world, in some cases isolated by an unknown force or maybe due to what are now past experiences.
www.gladstonegallery.com
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