"Valo Imerlishvili has completely distanced himself from the Soviet legacy he learned at the Academy of Arts, the fine manner he nurtured from academism, and through transformation-interpretation, he has developed the form to the concept-form. For example Shota Rustaveli's sculpture created by him reflects the idea of Shota Rustaveli from the beginning to the end. The sculpture is made of stone and is nourished from a copy of Shota Rustaveli's fresco in the Jerusalem Cross Monastery (photo of D. Tskhadadze, taken at the Jerusalem Cross Monastery, shortly before the Shota Rustaveli's fresco was scraped off). On the fresco, Shota Rustaveli, the eastern forerunner of the Western Renaissance, stared at St. John of Damascus and St. Maximus the Confessor with a request for blessings, and for centuries he uttered a pleading voice: "May God bless Shota, who painted this. Amen! Rustveli". By projecting the image of Rustaveli, the sculpture is lit at night. The generalized shape of the stone does not have specific characteristics and therefore its appearance changes at different times of the day. Emotional or expressive traits are included within the form. Such modeling of form by means of light is the bearer of the idea of consciousness, the radiance of the mind. The artist shares contemporary thinking models, but the connection with the Georgian plastic tradition is revealed by the principle of blockage typical for the Georgian relief, as the information marked on the form and, at the same time, the continuous process of transformation of ethnocultural identity into visual form."

Vladimer (Valo) Imerlishvili, Blog of Alexanda Gabunia, 2020