April 11,2008
Anna Tsimintia
Georgia Today

This month, Sheraton Metechi Palace is hosting an exhibition of the works of David Charkviani. The show will feature pieces that have never been exhibited in Georgia before. The exhibition opens on Friday, April 11 at 7 pm and will remain on view over the next month.

The title of the exhibition is “Return” – in this case, it speaks of the artist coming “back to the future,” growing tired from traveling and seeking to find home. What was it that David Charkviani was doing before he started to look for a home?

Before “Return,” there was a diversity of interests, spheres he was involved in and places he lived. Having tried out different professions, he finally concludes: I don’t have a profession. David moved from place to place: Alma-Ata, Tashkent, Moscow, then St. Petersburg. But one day he missed home. After many years abroad, his Georgian is a bit patchy, causing a lot of funny misunderstandings. Still, it is possible to get everything from the tiny bits of information he releases while talking about himself.

Charkviani started painting not long ago, in his forties. Once, he says, his friends were renovating their office and there was left over wall-paper after that. Almost randomly, he started to make images on it, liked it and this is how he started panting. He has no academic background; he didn’t even have any kind of contact with arts before. Soon, he moved to canvas, and he is not planning to abandon his newfound passion any time soon.

Expressing his emotions and moods in the language of symbolism and making his feelings and reality abstract, he tries just to express and entertain himself. “I don’t care about opinions,” he says. “I don’t expect anything from the audience.” That makes him a very open and sincere shaper of his fantasies, as he just allows his brush to move however it wants to move. He doesn’t tend to represent anything concrete and easily legible: he likes symbols because they speak in their own language, not in a language of factual images.

Although he says that nothing around is important for him, he is pleased to hear that viewers enjoy his paintings. It is important that the images be positive, with a power to please, he says. He calls it psy-art to draw attention to the importance of psychological power of a painting. David Charkviani deeply believes that he is not influenced by anyone. Nor can he be, he says he doesn’t care about names, because he doesn’t need to know about anyone and anything from the field of painting, being “completely independent.”

To see results of David Charkviani’s self-entertainment or, as he referred to it, “good play,” visit Sheraton Metechi Palace exhibition hall any time after April 11. The exhibition will remain open for one month.