This solo exhibition of Georgian artist Vajiko Chachkhiani presents a newly commissioned body of work. The show synthesises different media used by the artist in the past to create an immersive universe of Chachkhiani's interest in radically tackling ideas of myth, tradition and heritage.
Lending the exhibition its title, a monumental forest installation of dead trees encircles sculptures borrowed from both antiquity and history. Perched on wooden pedestals, the worn and cracking sculptures are effaced, incomplete or studded with wedges, which either hold them together or threaten to tear them apart. They refer to the fragmented nature of history as story telling, and together with the rest of the show explore how history and myth define contemporary psychology.
Just outside this impenetrable forest stand 3 wooden barns, put together as traditional Georgian country constructions. Two of the larger ones, with intricate glass windows are reminiscent of Georgian verandas. Nostalgic places of leisure and time spent with family, they too point to a difficult relation with one's memories and heritage, on a more personal scale.
One of the smaller barns shows a newly commissioned video, Glass Bones. A dark and daring contemporary interpretation of a popular Georgian fairy-tale, in which a son sacrifices his mother's heart for an impossible love, the video is a Lacanian exploration of the fragile relationship between desire, life and death, carried through generations by myths and folklore. In an inquisitive and bold manner the artist probes the tales that often pass unexamined yet have a tremendous effect on our understanding of identity-family, national belonging and the self.