AIDA Nederland

Exhibition Maya Chijavadze

Period: 30-09 / 30-10 /2008
Opening 02-10-2008 – 18.00 -20.00 hrs.
Amstelkerk, Amstelveld 10
1017 JD AMSTERDAM

The work of Maya Chijavadze is based on a broad artistic background. She studied fine arts at the State Academy of Tbilisi, graduated in the faculty of Architecture and participated as an art director and costume designer in Georgian film productions. She lived in Tbilisi (1952-1988),Paris (1988-1989) and Amsterdam, her actual residence. This rich background manifests itself in a many-sided, fertile and highly personal art, which attracts attention both in Holland and abroad.

In her carrier there can be discerned several stages, clearly separated, still interrelated with each other.
In her Tbilisi period she was involved in the film production, making detailed costume designs and very beautiful, big size stagings of film shots on wooden panels.
In Paris she came under the lasting spell of the poetry of Anna Akhmatova, resulting in hundreds of elegant, light, and dreamy illustrations of her work.
The link between the visual arts and poetry has been from then on always near at hand, and comes strongly to the fore again in her most recent work, inspired on the bible.
Once in Amsterdam she developed into a confident, full grown painter, covering a wide range of subjects, from city views, portraits and even horse paintings to her favourite form of expression, the world of imagination, or better said, the imaginative transformation of basic human emotions to a general, symbolic level. She often combined painting with the making of installations and maquettes, in which her architectural and cinematographic background helped her once again. These installations and maquettes were in their turn often the object of her paintings. This last procedure was the seed of a new way of working to which Maya turned in 2005.

From that year on Maya is making almost exclusively digital art. The change however, is less abrupt as it first seems to be. Her work still retains a painterly quality, combined with architectural and theatrical elements, but enriched by the possibilities offered by the new medium. Her actual working procedure is as follows: she makes photographs of her own installations and maquettes, sometimes combining them with ready-mades, scans the pictures and prints them on canvas. Even though this working procedure is of recent date, she has mastered the new medium completely, resulting in impressive series of works.

for more information about Maya Chijvadze: www.mayachijavadze.com