Gallery Bukia Vakhania presents ‘Cold Shower’, Nestan Abdushelishvili’s first solo exhibition with the gallery at its Tbilisi location.
The exhibition shifts attention away from the finished form and toward the process of artistic creation – emphasizing action, continuous transformation, and a conception of creation as a self-sustaining phenomenon rather than an act driven solely by a final outcome. Within this process, particular significance is given to everyday labor the often-unseen effort that plays a decisive role in shaping form.
In this light, the transformation of space becomes a central gesture: the artist brings her private working environment into the exhibition setting, subtly redefining both the function and the meaning of the space itself.
This approach takes on material form within the exhibition and unfolds across different media. The presented paintings are multi-layered, as if their surfaces bear traces accumulated in layers of time. Here, action gradually transforms into form, while marks of erasure and overpainting become integral elements of the work itself.
Paintings made on found objects add spatial and contextual depth to the exhibition. Collected from different places, these objects originally belonged to everyday, domestic environments. They seem to carry traces of use, time, and human presence. The paintings executed on them do not aim to ‘aestheticize’ the objects, but rather emphasize their past and former function.
In the burned velvet works, velvet – a material associated with softness and interior spaces is transformed through fire. Here, burning is not merely a physical impact but an irreversible gesture that carries the material into a new state. Fire thus functions not only as a force of destruction, but as a tool of inscription, through which the image emerges from erasure.
Nestan Abdushelishvili (b. 1989, Tbilisi) completed her MA in Professional Photography in 2017. Her artistic practice spans photography, painting, installation, and video. She explores themes of human relationships, socio-cultural transformation, and the relationship between art and time.
She has participated in numerous exhibitions at Gallery Nectar, Gallery 4710, TBC Gallery Space, Raum, Tbilisi Photography & Multimedia Museum, Obscura, and the Tbilisi Center of Contemporary Art.
