Artist: Systems Research Group
Exhibition title: New Paintings
Venue: E.A. Shared Space, Tbilisi, Georgia
Date: September 20 – October 20, 2024
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and E.A. Shared Space, Tbilisi
E.A. Shared Space is delighted to invite you to the opening of solo exhibition New Paintings by Systems Reseach Group.
Presented new body of work comprises a monotonous repetition of abstraction based on a symbol derived from a popular culture. The inverted symbol in itself carries a multiplicity of meanings, which originating from the Western popular culture remains at the peak of popularity in today’s Japan. The work undeniably brings some of the Japanese culture at stake – like short poems, Japanese Tanka, these works are minimalistic, in terms of form and selection of material, concrete and to the point in terms of representation and abstract at the same time, political in meaning and nearly devoid of pedagogical dogma, critical and softly comforting, aggressive yet delicate and un-non-in-vasive. It is nearly impossible to read the body of work based on any of these binaries, without interpreting the conflicting definitions at once. The artist give space to the audi-ence and believes in the various readings depending on their position and perspective.
Calling onto historical thinkers, such as the likes of Martin Heidegger, the series carry questions related to the material and it’s language as autonomous on its own terms.
The materials used for creating the series are specific to industrial and home-decoration utilisation. Stuck immediately to the walls of the gallery using industrial strength fasteners, the immediacy of the unmediated materials is striking. The series of eight works of household gloss on Corex reusable plastic sheet question the agency of material. It is as if, the author is directing the gaze of audience not only towards the labour which is often left unnoticed at the backstages of contemporary art production, but also to the backstage itself. It is as if the works rip open the walls between art as an outcome and art as the process and what it is quite literary and symbolically made of.
Surely the work is continuing some of the art historical traditions, such as Arte Povera and Japanese Action Painting. The Systems Reseach Group’s practice refers to their predecessors’ as the points of departure, adding new dimensions to the work as painting and object at once.
