Ria Kacharava at Szena Gallery

Artist: Ria Kacharava

Exhibition title: Road Narrows

Curated by: Desiree Almodovar

Venue: Szena Gallery, Moscow, Russia

Date: March 14 – May 1, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Szena Gallery, Moscow

On March 13th the exhibition “Road Narrows” by the Georgian artist Ria Kacharava opens at the gallery сцена/ szena.

In the new project created for the сцена/ szena gallery, Ria Kacharava (born in 1991), who opened her personal exhibition “Nateba” at THE INLAY gallery (NEW YORK, NY) in October 2018, continues the line of figurative painting with elements of street art and abstraction.

One of the key images of the creative method of Ria Kacharava is a mask, that might be presented as an independent form and as an attribute of humanized figures. Thus, the artist thematizes the issue of public images, social representation in modern society.

According to Desiree Almodovar, curator of the exhibition and the Creative Time NYC member: “Ria Kacharava’s work is informed equally by the traditional underpinnings of figurative art and the unrestrained nature of expressionism. Her emotionally charged characters are placed in environments that blend nature with technology in order to address themes of theatrical public images, inviting a broader understanding of contemporary identity. Ria has created a myriad of intriguing tableaus and characters that suggest tension between authentic qualities and fabricated behaviors. The lines between gender and species are completely blurred, making the resulting pictorial language welcome the group’s phycological similarities rather than celebrate physical differences.”

For the Ria Kacharava’s show “Road Narrows” the A.D.E.D. outdoor interface design collective created two installations: sheets of metal and a textile fabric covered with tags, that became a part of the exhibition.

сцена / szena is a chamber art space in the center of Moscow, created by curator Anastasia Shavlokhova. The main focus of the gallery is a systematic work with artists, in particular providing support in the forming of their own creative language, and developing the context around them. сцена / szena acts as a mediator between the artist and the viewer, and more broadly – between the local and the international art communities.

Richter is the 19th century mansion in the center of Moscow (Pyatnitskaya street, 42). It features a hotel, a bar, a restaurant, a vermutheria, a library, a garden and the gallery. It is a new independent platform for entrepreneurs, people of art, media and education, designers, musicians and writers to communicate and create.