Salome Dumbadze

Indoor Window

EASS is delighted to invite you to the opening of Indoor Window – Salome Dumbadze’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition brings together a series of paintings, graphic and textile work created during 2020.

Dumbadze’s practice is rooted in painting and eloquently delivers knowledge and influences of some Georgian painting traditions from the medieval wall painting to the legacy of a 20’th century painter Niko Pirosmani. It is especially her choice of color scheme and working technique that reminds us of the medieval traditions of Orthodox Christian Georgian culture, such as icono- clastic symbols of Ateni’s Sioni, apocryphal painting of David Gareja Monastery Complex (6th – 9th centuries) and canonic painting of the 13th century Timostesubani Monastery. Using traditional oil on canvas, Dumbadze controverts the characteristic thickness and often, masculine power associated with the oil brush, into an almost transparent experience of a painting by a paintball, reminding us strongly of girlhood. She experiments with framing, which is integral to her body of work. While giving the frames extra care and focus, she turns this decorative element into a political act of caring. Apart from the subject matter, a frame too, speaks about current questions of feminism.

Subject matter shifts from an environment of the actual and imagined home settings, towards the images of animals. Open spaces, windows and empty interiors invite the viewer into the unknown.