Texts / Publications

“Gabrielle Kourdadzé’s art is determined, at first glance, by the order of a formal questioning, that of the inscription in space of one or more figures – if not fragments of figures –, contained within the support on which she has chosen to represent it or them. The way she has of showing them, on the monochrome background of the canvas or paper she uses, exceeds their effect of cut-out silhouettes, as well as that of a freeze frame. They appear there as if in a suspended space-time, waiting, captured outside of any narrative context, leaving the viewer to his or her free imagination. Executed with a brush, sometimes in ink, sometimes in oil, depending on the support chosen, Kourdadzé’s figures stand out all the more clearly from the background as the latter is systematically painted last, once she has created them. The artist then meticulously follows the outline so as to surround them entirely in a single colour space that covers the surface left in reserve. The counterpoint between her characters and this chromatic expanse helps to highlight the void to make it a full partner – “like another character”, says the artist – of the entire composition. Whether individual or in groups, her figures - which are always in actual size - occupy the iconic field until they approach its edges, as if she were trying to inscribe them there as much as possible, without this ever seeming constrained. They thus offer themselves to be seen in a relationship of reality that makes them common, even familiar. Although the artist speaks of them as "portraits", her characters remain anonymous, extracted as they are from their environment. In doing so, beyond the care of their execution, Kourdadzé's figures fall within the mode of metexis, imposing both their presence and their potential for symbolic expression. Taken from news photographs or taken on the fly in the street, her images operate overall like snapshots, especially since what the artist retains is nothing other than a detail. In this way, her characters function as clues to situations of a generic, even universal nature. Often depicted in pairs or groups, each of a different color, they all seem confined in the same solitude, the same silence. At the same time, the artist plays with superpositions that bring them together in the same spatial unity, link them in transparency - sometimes close to a stereoscopic vision - and give them a certain density. Something of a theatricality is at play in the way in which Kourdadzé regulates their relationship, which is also found in the paintings of fragments of bodies whose images are charged with a dimension of emphatic enigma. When discovering her characters, we inevitably wonder about their identity, their posture and their relationship ; we note that they do not exchange any glances and that they abandon themselves to theirs in a form of inner quest. Here and there, we invent the extension of their truncated figure, like the possibility of a perceived reality, or simply glimpsed. If the titles of her works provide us with very little information about the history of the characters she depicts, the importance that the artist gives to the play of their hands says a lot about the idea of a connection or the expression of a feeling and their placement in a situation refers them to the suggestion of an experience. The scenography that Gabrielle Kourdadzé imagined for her exhibition contributes advantageously to restoring this human dimension. A visual artist, she is also a musician and it is important to her to "make her visual works dialogue with sound compositions." At the end of a whole process of notations, reading and recording conversations noted over time, she composed a soundtrack that combines words, speeches and fragments in a structured hubbub and comes to fill the exhibition space in a more or less audible way throughout its development. This is to say that Gabrielle Kourdadzé invites us to have a doubly phenomenological experience, visual and auditory, at the source of images and sounds, to better highlight their power of sign and echo. "

“Nothing predestined them to work as a duo in the context of the same exhibition. Nothing, that is, except painting. If painting has its secrets, it’s always possible to pierce them and catch a glimpse of what might bring them together. All it takes is a good understanding of the artists, a sense of their motivation to use this medium, and an appreciation of the similarities and differences between them. Nothing, then, but painting and the desire of a third party. Gabrielle Kourdadzé’s art is driven by the human, Julien Colombier’s by the vegetable; one is rooted in reality, the other in the imaginary. The latter uses photography to capture this or that posture of individuals encountered here and there; the former leaves no place to the human species and his universe is pure fiction. One might therefore think that they are poles apart, but having chosen painting as their medium of expression and the figure as their plastic vector, they come together in the way they approach this exercise. Of course, the latter’s art is based on the problem of inscribing in space one or more figures – or even fragments of figures – contained within the support on which they are depicted, while the former’s approach is based on letting go of surface colour to express something of a vital force. But in both cases, it’s an attempt to express a being-there, in the sense that what governs their respective art stems from that inner necessity that Kandinsky defined as the sine qua non of any creative act. What’s more, each of them has a drawing practice that is constitutive of their approach, and thus at the source of their creation. Kourdadzé’s is based on meticulous attention to detail, and her inks on paper play with subtle monochrome values. Colombier’s drawing is the very framework of his field of practice, whether it occupies an entire wall or the surface of a single sheet of paper, and his use of pastel enables him to play with all kinds of velvety tones and chromatic vibrations. The term “Contemplations” chosen for their exhibition speaks volumes about an attitude to painting, similar to the way Gasiorowski spoke of it when we visited his studio and he invited us, at one point, to “go and see Peinture”, embodying it in the mythical-fictitious character of Kiga. Taken from the root of the word, contemplation literally means “to be with a portion of the sky”. It’s an invitation to an elevation of the spirit. But it’s also a question of time, since every form of contemplation requires us to take it or give it. This ties in with the ontological foundation of painting, when we say – once again to these two artists – that “the luxury of painting is to take its time, and the luxury of the painter is to give it theirs. And the viewer must act too. How could it be otherwise, if we aspire to enter painting? Kourdadzé’s halting figures, like Colombier’s invasive landscapes, demand that our gaze linger on them because, far beyond what is given to see, the subject is never more than pre-text, whereas painting is the text. Texture, matter. In this case, colour, in contained flat tints for one, in brushed strokes for the other – but it doesn’t matter how. What differentiates and unites them testifies to the possibility of a mode that is as inexhaustible in its resources as it is resolutely perennial in the galleries.”

“Of Franco-Georgian origin, musician and born of twins, Gabrielle Kourdadzé plays with superpositions and intertwinings of images to create intermediate bodies, mixed by a double identity. “Still, life (IRM)” mobilizes areas of her brain responsible for the perception of movement and its impediment by the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Woven with faded flowers held in the fingertips, the abstractions from medical imaging and neurological conventions evoke the pleating of baroque drapes, the meeting of two life cycles. Accompanied by a soundtrack composed from her ink drawings, the work summons its own paradoxes (dry / wet), as well as the dissonances and harmonics of a still life at the origin of new organic processes.”