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Contemporary Art Archive - Tbilisi

Archive of Academic Writings

2021 Edition of the Project is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Youth of Georgia

Ketevan Matabeli Retrospective Exhibition [National Gallery]

2015

Ketevan Matabeli - painter, graphic artist, author of collages and assemblies. He is a laureate of the Shota Rustaveli Prize and an honorary citizen of Tbilisi. He graduated from the Tbilisi Academy of Arts in 1978. He has been a member of the Georgian Artists' Union since 1984.

For the first time, the exhibition will fully present the work of Ketevan Matabeli. The exhibition will feature the artist's abstract assemblies, Tbilisi landscapes based on old photographs, handmade books of the same "foliage", as well as collages on backgammon and chess, card and dominoes. The exhibition will include installation.

Multi-layered factual narration has become the spoken language of Ketevan Matabeli. To create collages and assemblies, he developed an original technique that conveys the artist's thoughts and emotions. His work is based on the ideas of Galaktion, Bulgakov, Maeterlinck and, most importantly, Rustaveli. However, it can be said that the origin of the artistic order he found is the family relics taken from the basement and preserved in the coffin. It was the connection with them - the touch with the past that defined the originality of Ketevan Matabeli's work.