GALLERY CATALOGUE 2019

Premiere 2019

Flag Art Group is an innovative organization for art and culture in the Metropolitan Area. FLAG is dedicated to supporting both emerging and established artists from the local cosmopolitan community through a variety of events and media such as live exhibitions, an online art gallery, interviews with artists, and printed catalogues like this one.

FLAG’s mission is to connect all types of people through its work in the arts. By promoting artists through its products and services, facilitating collaboration between different creative enterprises, and bridging the gap between art and business, FLAG hopes to share the stories of the local art world to a much wider audience.

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FLAG is a contemporary art gallery and creative multimedia marketing agency for artists. www.fortleeartgroup.com www.artsy.net/flag-art-group 222 Bruce Reynolds Boulevard, Fort Lee, NJ 07024 fortleeartgroup@gmail.com +1-201-561-6707 @fortleeartgroup

@fortleeartgroup

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FLAG Art Group Presents: All Media, All Cultures An Art Exhibition Beyond Cultural Identities November 8-15, 2019

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FLAG Art Group is making its debut on the art scene with its premiere show: the All Media, All Cultures Art Exhibition, featuring works by a variety of multicultural artists.

The title Beyond Cultural Identities refers to the artists’ range of unique personal experiences and how each individual’s own distinct culture has influenced the development of their work.

The visitors of the exhibition are given a rare opportunity to engage with this artistic and cultural diversity in one single space while also overlooking the skyline of Manhattan, a global city that acts as the heart of the art world throughout the entire global community.

Participating Artists: Ekaterina Abramova, Bobby Anspach, Bong Jung Kim, Khatia Esartia, Irina Deshchenko-Lakshin, Konstantin Mindadze, Levan Mindiashvili, Lado Pochkhua, Tony Seker, Leila Shelia, Evan Venegas.

Curated by Nino Macharashvili

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NINO MACHARASHVILI CURATOR AND DIRECTOR FOR FLAG

Nino Macharashvili is a curator and director of FLAG Art Group, a new organization for art and culture in the Metropolitan Area. FLAG is dedicated to supporting both emerging and established artists in the local community.

FLAG’s premiere show, All Media, All Cultures - Beyond Cultural Identities, curated

by Nino Macharashvili, showcases works by a variety of multicultural contemporary artists: Ekaterina Abramova, Bobby Anspach, Bong Jung Kim, Khatia Esartia, Irina Deshchenko Lakshin, Konstantin Mindadze, Levan Mindiashvili, Lado Pochkhua, Tony Seker, Leila Shelia and Evan Venegas. FLAG announced its open call for submissions in early August’19 and received nearly 100 different artist portfolios - by the end of the submission process, 10 artists were selected for the exhibition and 18 were chosen for FLAG’s catalogue.

FLAG’s first catalogue is dedicated to its premiere show, representing carefully selected works by contemporary artists as well as interviews and articles about the artists themselves. The catalogue also includes a range of unique articles about subjects in the world of contemporary art, written by an eclectic cast of art professionals.

Featuring an online gallery via Artsy.net, FLAG will use its online presence to promote its artists to a wider audience of art collectors, curators, and other figures in the art industry.

Originally from the capital city of Tbilisi in the country of Georgia, Nino Macharashvili has over 8 years of experience in the field of art. A member of the Culture and Creativity Leaders in Georgia, Nino has attended a multitude of trainings and workshops on art management, has participated in international conferences, and has featured her papers on contemporary art in several publications. Macharashvili

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worked at contemporary art gallery Project ArtBeat from 2015 to 2018, and throughout her career has organized up to 50 solo and group shows at Project ArtBeat permanent exhibition space, Moving Gallery, museums and international art fairs in different countries. Working at a global scale, the curator has organized booths for the art fairs including Contemporary Istanbul in Turkey, Art Dubai in the UAE, Kyiv Art Week in Ukraine, and Art Vilnius in Lithuania.

Together with Jeremy Gales, Nino Macharashvili co-curated the video art exhibition Shots Across the Plane at the Museum of Modern Art in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2018, showcasing video works from prominent video artists such as Pipilotti Rist, Hito Steyerl, Janet Biggs, Dana Sederowsky, Tamara K.E. and Tamar Chaduneli.

Nino is also a co-founder of the artistic residency ARCHEID, an arts initiative supporting cultural sustainability through multicultural artistic collaboration. After the curation of ARCHED’s first site-specific exhibition at the abandoned building of a former wine factory in Imereti Region, Georgia, the show won the prize for the most creative project nomination.

In 2018-2019, Macharashvili was a curator of the Georgian Museum of fine arts, arranging solo and group exhibitions for contemporary artists in the museum’s permanent exhibition space as well as organizing a series of the concerts Music at the Museum. The exposition showcased portraits of women, created between 1947 and 2000 and reflected the development of painted portraiture throughout recent history.

Nino Macharashvili is a PhD candidate and an invited lecturer at the Tbilisi State University in Georgia. The subject of her thesis explores the use of new media in contemporary art.

DOUG RIZIO

WRITER AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR FOR FLAG Doug Rizio is an artist, art curator and photographer who serves as the writer and creative director for FLAG. Leading the Art Group with a vision of the future, Doug is integrating new technologies into FLAG’s creative projects, aiding in the development of multimedia endeavors such as video and audio interviews, livestreams of events and exhibitions, the convergence of art exhibitions and musical performances, and the expansion of the organization into the digital sphere.

FLAG is an innovative, independent pop-up gallery that operates out of a variety of venues and works with other companies to run its shows. Unlike traditional art spaces, FLAG can do anything, anywhere, and chooses to collaborate with businesses rather than competing with them. Employing a combination of artistry, technical production, and a network of contacts in creative industries, FLAG is making its debut on the art scene with a whole itinerary of exciting ideas.

Born and raised in Northern New Jersey, Doug Rizio is a native to the Metropolitan Area and has lived with the lights of the New York City skyline for the entirety of his life. Advancing his creative abilities with equal proficiencies in both art and technology from an early age, Doug eventually attended the technical magnet high school of Bergen County Academies in Hackensack and graduated in 2009 with a diploma from the Academy for Visual Arts. Rizio then enrolled in the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, completing his education in 2013 with a Major in Visual Art and a Minor in Art History.

Living in the small Middlesex County seat of New Brunswick for several years after graduation, Doug Rizio obtained a valuable perspective on the transient population

of the local university, the gradual transformations of the urban center, and the power of the collective to organize large-scale community events. Doug began organizing his own art exhibitions in the house that he shared with a cluster of close friends, enlisting the talents of the people in his social circle and steadily expanding his reach to a greater audience through each and every development. Once his house was no longer able to contain the numerous guests who visited his functions, Rizio moved into public venues such as local coffee shops and art supply stores, continuously gaining more resources and a greater reputation until he was able to cultivate close personal working relationships with the official galleries in the surrounding area - including (but not limited to) Above Art Studios and Alfa Art Gallery, the only two permanent establishments for visual art in the city of New Brunswick outside of the facilities at Rutgers.

Doug Rizio’s largest and most recent personal project was the Dark Arts Party at Above Art Studios in 2018, his independently organized art and music exhibition that transformed the space into a luminous environment featuring glow-in-the-dark, blacklight reactive and LED artworks by over 30 local artists and drawing a crowd of nearly 200 people throughout the night of the opening reception.

The artist and art curator also works on his own art pieces in his spare time, slowly developing works like “Glitchcraft:” an art series that uses traditional techniques to reproduce digital designs representing his thoughts about subjects like artificial intelligence, simulation theory, the extra dimensions of reality, the spiritual and technological evolution of human beings, and the dystopian societies of the future.

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FLAG ARTISTs

10-13 LEVAN MINDIASHVILI

14-17 TONY SEKER

18-21 BONG JUNG KIM

22-25 LADO POCHKHUA

26-27 BOBBY ANSPACH

28-29 Konstantin Mindadze

30-31 EVAN VENEGAS

32-33 EKATERINA ABRAMOVA

34 KHATIA ESARTIA

FLAG CONTRIBUTORS

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ASLI SAMADOVA TA(R)DINO 6 PLATFORM, A BAKU-BORN ART INITIATIVE WITH INTERNATIONAL OUTREACH

DAVID PARRISH WHAT THE ART BUYER SEES

KATYA GROKHOVSKY THE IMMIGRANT ARTIST BIENNIAL IS SET TO LUNCH IN 2020

FLAG ARTISTs

35 DOUGLAS TAUSIK RYDER

36 OXANA KOVALCHUK

37 GEORGE GAGOSHIDZE

38 ALPANA MITTAL

39 HYUNGKYUNG RYU

40 LEILA SHELIA

41 MANUCHAR OKROSTSVARIDZE

42 IRINA DESHCHEKO-LAKSHIN

43 ROCKO IREMASHVILI

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NATIA BUKIA AND SALOME VAKHANIA PROJECT ARTBEAT

TIM WILLIAMS THE CHALLENGES FOR CONTEMPORARY ART IN CENTRAL ASIA

VANESSA KOWALSKI WHO CARES?

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LEVAN MINDIASHVILI

Georgian-Born Mixed Media Artist Levan Mindiashvili Photo Credit: Angelys Ocana / Good People Bad Habits

Herald Square (New York), 2013, Acrylic, Enamel, Spray Paint, Oil and Charcoal on Canvas, 64 x 68 inches

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG Georgian-born Levan Mindiashvili is a world-traveling, Brooklyn-based mixed media artist whose nomadic lifestyle has given him a unique perspective on the architecture and urban development of human habitation, subjects that both stand out as the primary focus of his large-scale, spray-painted works of art.

Born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1979, Levan Mindiashvili began his career as an artist upon receiving a BFA in Sculpture from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, after studying there from 1997 to 2003. However, several years following the acquisition of his first degree, then-sculptor Mindiashvili decided to leave his native country and head to foreign lands. In 2008, Levan moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and began pursuing a second education in the National University of Art, known in Spanish as IUNA. After completing his Postgraduate Studies in Combined Artistic Languages in 2010, Mindiashvili spent a few more years in South America until his wanderlust struck again: Levan’s next move was North, to the ever-growing metropolis of New York City. Now, the artist lives and works back and forth between Brooklyn and Tbilisi.

Levan Mindiashvili employs a variety of paint types in his artwork, from spray paint to oils, acrylics and enamels. The artist also imbues his work with a variety of styles, fluctuating from photorealism to total abstraction. For example, while the artist often creates highly-refined paintings with such a level of detail and realism that they often resemble photographs - a key difference made even more difficult to discern by the abstract nature and skewed perspectives of his subjects – some of his works look like faded, outdated and unfinished versions of something else, an intentional style that reflects the artist’s thoughts about the transient nature of the world around us.

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Astor Place (New York), 2013, Acrylic, Oil and Spray Paint on Canvas, 60 x 62 inches

Penn Station (New York), 2013, Acrylic, Oil Pencil, Spray Paint on Canvas, 64 x 90 inches

Yet regardless of the specific artistic direction of his work, Levan Mindiashvili almost always emphasizes architectural forms over organic ones, prominently displaying subjects such as high-rise buildings and city streets at the forefront of a vast majority of his compositions. However, very rarely does the audience see a full, completed version of any of Mindiashvili’s forms – many of the artist’s scenes feature buildings reflected from the windows of other adjacent buildings, like someone gazing upon themselves in a mirror, or buildings whose renderings more closely resemble uncompleted architectural blueprints than realistic depictions of actual locations.

The pieces of architecture in Levan’s work all have one thing in common: they offer shifting, unfinished and distorted perspectives of subjects that we often see solid, complete and straight-on. The overarching style that connects all of the artist’s works together reflect an artistic sensibility that directly relates to Mindiashvili’s own personal experiences and thoughts about life.

Levan Mindiashvili’s practice as an artist was inevitably influenced by his travels throughout the world: moving from the capital of an Eastern European country to the cultural centers of the Western Hemisphere has given him a very particular view on places and the ideas we impose upon them, such as the concept of “home,” how society is changing in a globalized world, and the different relationships between communal and private spaces.

At one point searching for a permanent place to call his own home, it wasn’t until the globe-trotting Levan finally accepted the mindset of nomadism that he saw how the world was also in a perpetual state of flux. Fluidity, not permanence, is the true state of reality.

The contemporary condition of continuously changing social forms has established itself as a new rule for the human civilization. Change is no longer a temporary or transient aspect of society, it is the fundamental nature of life as a human being.

Mindiashvili now has a heightened interest in the development of new urban centers as representations of that eternal transience. Settling down in the fast-gentrifying neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn has immersed himself in one of the best examples of that quickly changing ultramodern environment of the new millennium - but his home country of Georgia is also a burgeoning metropolitan hotspot with an emerging art scene. Seeing the differences between places like the sprawling, global metropolis of New York and the tiny but colorful capital city of Georgia, Tbilisi, the artist explores the dynamics of the “center” and the “peripheries.” How is the cultural identity of a person or place on the periphery defined by the expansive and ever-growing reach of the centers of globalization? How does this impact the art world? These are questions that Levan Mindiashvili addresses in his work.

Among Levan Mindiashvili’s awards are Emerging Artist of 2011, Movistar Arte Jóven from Buenos Aires and the Commission Grant for Public Art Projects from the The National Endowments for the Arts in New York in 2014. Levan was also a resident artist at the NARS Foundation for the Spring/Summer Season of 2018 in Brooklyn. Mindiashvili’s artworks have been included in group exhibitions at Super Dutchess in New York City; the BRIC Biennale Vol. 3 and ODETTA in Brooklyn; the Georgian National Gallery and the Tbilisi History Museum in Tbilisi; Arsenal in Kiev; the Tartu Art Museum in Estonia; and the 7th Beijing Biennial in China. Additionally, the artist’s solo and two-man exhibitions include “Non_ Place” at SFA Projects and “Unintended Archaeology at the Lodge Gallery in NYC; “In-Between” at the State Silk Museum in Tibilisi; and “Here” at the Georgian National Museum in Mestia. His works can currently be found in public collections of the Georgian National Museum and the State Silk Museum in Tbilisi as well as the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

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Transmutations:

reflections on Levan Mindiashvili’s work One of the prevalent themes in contemporary art – exploration of identity, or what makes us who we are – seems to have preeminent importance for artists from Georgia whose formative years coincided with the country’s emergence as an independent state. Questioning cultural stereotypes and contradictions in the construction of historical memory, the artists explore such attributes of identity as gender, nationality, and heritage. One of the artists in the FLAG exhibition, Levan Mindiashvili (b. 1979), who was born and raised in Georgia but now lives and work in the United States, tackles these issues in his work.

As a mixed media artist, Mindiashvili often focuses on a detail – it could be a fragmentary image, a phrase, or an architectural piece – and uses it as a gateway for the discussion on past and memory. For him, urban architecture provides the most vivid cases of transformation in time. Take, for example, “No.8 (From the Archives of the Georgian Brutalism)” (2019), which is based on a photograph of a prominent building in Tbilisi (former Ministry of Highway Construction), built in the 1970s [fig. 1]. The reworked image in which the building looks almost bleached, reduced to its grainy texture, is reminiscent of the times in the recent past when it was visibly decaying, reflecting the hard economic times and bleak outlook; notably, the building was renovated and has taken on a new life as a bank headquarters.

Our life experiences can change many aspects of our identity. Levan states that because of his travels and immigration (he lived in Germany and Argentina before moving to the US), he “accepts nomadic, not-belonging-to-anywhere mindset” and for him “fluidity, is the most contemporary condition.” Also, being away from Georgia and encountering other cultures helped him better understand his own.

His research is ongoing and also involves cooperation with other artists, for example when he organized a group show “Heritage” with Tato Akhalkatsishvili, Uta Bekaia, Irakli Bugiani, and Christian Tonhaiser in London in 2015.

For Mindiashvili, experimentation with art historical material remains vital. In an interesting take on Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass, he chose to depict only the famous surface cracks of the piece, thus highlighted the element of chance in the artwork [Fig. 2]. Duchamp obsessively planned and executed what became known as his seminal pieces, but their appearance was permanently altered with extensive webs of cracks after an accident during its transporting. Levan comments on his choice of material that he painted it in liquid mirror on glass, “which becomes an absolute mirror once dried, so the work always contains not only the actual image but also reflects surroundings and the viewers. I like to think of it as a meeting point of all three (the work, the viewer and the surrounding) and constantly updating archive of the ‘now’.”

Fig. 1 From the Archives of Georgian Brutalism No.7, 2019, Hand Painted Liquid Mirror on Glass Mounted on Steel Frame, 14 x 12 inches

Fig. 2 Study for The Large Glass (M.D.), 2019, Hand Painted Liquid Mirror on Glass Mounted on Steel Frame, 14 x 12 inches

Mariam Charlton is a graduate student in art history (CUNY - New York, NY). Her professional experience includes working at the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, specializing in museum education. Additionally, Mariam is passionate about contemporary artists from her native Republic of Georgia and engages with them in curatorial and exhibition projects.

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Avenue of Americas (New York), 2013, Acrylic, Enamel, Spray Paint, on Canvas, Nine Parts, Overall 72 x 108 inches

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TONY SEKER

Lebanese-Born American Abstract Painter Tony Seker AKA “Claxon Du Soleil”

Marilyn, 2019, Acrylic on Wrapped Canvas, 36 x 36 inches

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG The Featured or “Flagship” Artist of FLAG’s first event, the All Media, All Cultures Exhibition, Tony Seker is a Lebanese-born American abstract painter with a vibrant creative personality, a unique personal backstory, and a strong connection to the art community of Fort Lee. Using the playful moniker “Claxon Du Soleil” for his art - a French phrase roughly meaning “honk” or “blast” from the sun, and inspired by an achievement in the Guinness Book of World Records for “the greatest frequency of car honks per minute per square mile” in his home city of Beirut, Lebanon - Tony Seker’s abstract paintings are truly a blast of bright colors, with bold bursts of movement and often a touch of light humor; similar to his own personality and particular sense of fashion. The artist has a love of life, a “joie de vivre,” and painting for him is a freeing expression of self: an embrace of emotion, an exercise in rule breaking, and an encounter with the unexpected that grants him a reprieve from the rigidity of reality. Seker’s artistry takes him on a trip where the journey is more important than the destination. To this painter, abstract art is akin to instrumental music such as classical or jazz - genres that give both the artist and audience the freedom to imbue the medium with their own meanings and create experiences that are more intimate, intuitive, and interpretive than the alternatives.

Tony is a prominent figure of the art scene in and around Fort Lee, acting as the Vice President of the town’s non-profit Artist Guild since 2017, leading a team of professional artists during the Fort Lee Fashion Week in 2018, and showing his work everywhere from nearby venues such as The Modern, Hudson Lights, and Pure Bliss Yoga and Art (where he is also a yoga instructor) to locations throughout Bergen County and beyond. However, although Tony Seker has lived in Fort Lee for several years, he is not a native of the town. Tony and his family fled from Beirut, Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. And while Seker never dreamed of being a professional artist when he was a child, much of his creative inspiration has come from that childhood refugee experience.

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The Red Baron, 2018, Acrylic on Canvas, 48 x 36 inches

Growing up in Lebanon, Tony innocently painted model war planes like many young boys - but after his family fled to America he lacked the proper colors and tools to paint his planes in the normal camouflage couture of green and brown. As a result, he resorted to using the hues he had on hand: bright reds and blues, hot pinks, bold oranges and loud yellows. Instead of paintbrushes, he used as an implement the very cardboard casing from his model airplane kits, creating a unique textured aesthetic which he continues to embrace in his work today. Although Seker didn’t realize it at the time, the coating of his war toys in the colors of the rainbow was retrospectively a way to express his feelings both of hope and despair conceived from his warrelated experience. Now, Seker employs this same vibrant painting style on everything else, and uses it to share more positive sentiments of anti-war and pro-humanity.

For Seker, living in a war zone often meant facing the threat of death.

Never sure whether he would live to see the next day or not, Tony saw two choices as a child: either hide under a table in constant fear, or celebrate life and treat it ‘like a party’ that could end at any moment. Seker chose to embrace the latter, and ever since then he has seen his own life as a perpetual kind of party - a gift. Surviving the harrowing experiences of his youth has led Tony to pursue and spread peace, love, and happiness through art (and yoga) as an adult. Seker has lived through some of the best and worst things that the world has to offer and appreciates all of the luck he has had overall.

While Tony Seker lives in privilege and relative safely as an artist in America, he still recognizes the millions around the globe who struggle against danger and oppression. Walking through the world as a minority and moving from country to country as a young teen gave him a permanent sensitivity to the prejudices and injustices faced by other groups of people.

Now, Seker reflects on the human condition through his daily meditations, and feels deeply connected to the issues of people everywhere.

Although Seker is never overtly political in his art, he modestly imparts his personal experiences into the medium and attempts to express a broad message of unity and equality throughout all of his work. Tony believes that everyone should feel a responsibility to improve the world for future generations, and he understands how our actions or inactions can help or hurt the others around us no matter how near or far. Ultimately, Tony Seker sees his paintings as tapestries that illustrate how we are all connected, despite our differences and separations - with a style that portrays the mosaic existence of our civilization.

Seker’s artistic reach has extended into the larger metropolitan region around Fort Lee, exposing his work to exhibitions in places such as Hoboken, SOHO, Montclair and Brooklyn, and granting him multiple awards from juried shows throughout the tri-state area, such as the Artist Choice Award for his painting “EYE OF THE TIGER” and Best In Show for paintings “KARMA and “BAZOOKA JOE.” Additionally, some of Tony Seker’s work can be found at the Flywheel Gallery in Piermont, NY, and the Art Works Gallery in Cedar City, UT, as well. Collectors of his work span even greater distances, from the Western United States to Europe and the Middle East.

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An Interview With Tony Seker

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

DOUG: I’m here with abstract painter and featured artist of our first exhibition, Tony Seker. How did you get your start as an artist?

TONY: Probably at conception, but more likely with a splatter on delivery? No, I’m joking. But I grew up during a war, a civil war in Lebanon, so much of my time was out of school doing creative things. During that time I used to paint these model warplanes in their camouflage colors, but after finally leaving Lebanon as a refugee, I could no longer painted them in that camouflage style. I would start painting them with more vibrant colors, and it was really a form of an expression of being anti-war and trying to keep myself uplifted rather than falling into despair.

DOUG: I know that you have a moniker, or a title, for your art style. What’s the name of that again?

TONY: It’s “Claxon du Soleil.” So, when we were kids, my brothers and I were instructed to be ready at a moment’s notice to leave Lebanon every time there was some kind of outbreak of war. The last time we left, I kind of cheated, and instead of taking a novel, or something kind of like a learning opportunity, I took the Guinness Book of World Records, and I found Lebanon cited twice: once for the largest bank robbery ever at the time, and the other one for the most number of car honks per mile per minute. They refer to honks as “claxon,” which is a French term for “horn.” I even use my own tiny horns sometimes. So “Claxon Du Soleil” is basically the honk, combined with the French term for Sun - so it’s like an explosion of the Sun, or the

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color, or the vibrancy, or the life from the Sun force. And so that’s why I thought that “Claxon Du Soleil” kind of embraces both my style, which tends to be colorful and explosive, but also my personality, and my “joie de vivre.”

DOUG: Yeah, your art has is a burst of colors.

TONY: Yeah.

DOUG: Do you have any message that you want to impart upon your audience through your paintings?

TONY: Yeah, I think for me, growing up and having traveled different countries at a young age and observing how people are different but yet the same, just coming at things from a different angle, I think the way that I paint, of bringing things together — it looks like there’s a lot of distinct elements, but as you get further away from it, it looks like, well, there’s one piece there — so it’s really about unity. Sort of like the tapestry of life, where we’re all different, but we’re also connected in some way. My idea of trying to inspire unity and being part of a solution to world change is part of what drives me. So that’s part of my message, or inspiration, for my art.

DOUG: Well, thanks for meeting with me Tony.

TONY: My pleasure, thank you very much.

Mars in the Burnt City, 2016, Acrylic on Wood Panel, 48 x 36 inches

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Bong Jung Kim

Korean Mixed Media Painter Bong Jung Kim

Addiction153, 2016, Mixed Media on Canvas, 41 x 41 inches

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG Korean artist Bong-Jung Kim can be described as a mixed media artist who merges modern technological components with traditional painting techniques, creating cybertronic works of art that contain important insights into the state of high-tech society.

Born in South Korea in 1962, Bong Jung Kim studied Western Painting and earned his BFA from Seoul University in 1990. Later moving to the United States, he eventually began his career as a professional artist, and has lived and worked in the Metropolitan Area of New York City ever since.

A skilled artist with a highly developed style, Bong Jung Kim’s signature technique has developed into the convergence of discarded electronic and mechanical materials with images of inky, black blossoms that resemble more sensual subjects such as flowers in bloom. Comparing and contrasting the disparate elements of artificial devices against organic forms, Bong Jung makes a statement on how the manmade creations of our advanced civilization have impacted our natural ways of being through their persistent integration into every aspect of our daily lives.

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Addiction350, 2017, Mixed Media on Card Board, 43 x 46 inches

One of Kim’s most notable series is called “Addiction,” a specific take on the particular predicament of internet pornography. While the consumption of pornographic content may attempt to ease certain issues like stress, depression and loneliness, an addiction to porn perpetuates the perilous obsession with what would otherwise be healthy sexual desires, sometimes even causing sexual repression and the development of physical and psychological problems that get in the way of real interpersonal relationships.

Featured throughout the artworks in this set are not only Bong Jung Kim’s trademark technological parts, but also the iconic red and black imagery of poppy flowers. A symbol of rare beauty and healing powers as well as taboos, the poppy was famously cultivated for its seeds, which were primary ingredients in the production of opium.

Referencing a powerful drug that rapidly causes increased dependence, a decreased sensitivity to its effects and an uncontrollable appetite for its use as well as being classically connected to sexual promiscuity, Bong Jung masterfully merges multiple forms of addiction into a single composition with each work of art in the set.

However, the addictions that Kim associates with his artworks are not solely focused on sex. Internet pornography would be unable to propagate without the creation of the computer network, and the artist is also making a commentary on technological addictions in addition to sexual ones. Enveloped and invaded by increasingly pervasive and perpetual advancements in the realms of codes and computers, human beings nearly exist in a cybernetic society in which the virtual world has virtually wormed its way into the real one. Many of the addictions that people succumb to are direct products of these high-tech stressors, and the ultimate irony is that the only way for some people to cope with their modern problems is to immerse themselves even more deeply into the very sources of those issues.

The honestly with which Bong Jung addresses these issues flies in the face of the traditional Korean culture, whose prudish sexual posture is known around the world.

However, for artist Mr. Kim, living in America means existing in a country that allows and accepts the open expression of sexuality and desire, sometimes to its detriment. And while the two countries do have certain cultural differences between them, both are extremely developed and industrious societies who are similarly unable to relinquish their reliance on technological devices. Bong Jung Kim’s “Addiction” series not only explores the problems that stand out as taboos for polite, middle class Korean society, it also presents the predicament of a man overwhelmed by a nation where open sexualization has become a mainstream part of the American experience, in the context of a world where cyberization is inescapable.

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An Interview With Bong Jung Kim

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

DOUG: I’m here with Bong Jung Kim, a painter from South Korea and a participating artist in FLAG’s first exhibition. So, Bong Jung, how did you first become a painter?

BONG JUNG: When I was 19 years old, I was working as a janitor at Seoul Medical University. One day, I saw a girl so beautiful that she stopped me in my tracks, and she eventually led me to an art club - from there on, my path to painting opened up in front of me.

DOUG: What are some of the pros and cons of working as a painter?

BONG JUNG: Unfortunately, being a painter doesn’t really pay the bills - it’s not my primary job because I’m not a full time professional yet. But the best part of painting is showing your works in an exhibition after all that time spent in the studio.

DOUG: How do you support yourself as a painter?

BONG JUNG: I couldn’t do it without the help of my wife, my two sons, my close friends, and my love of working.

DOUG: How did you develop your unique painting style?

BONG JUNG:I was walking by the Hudson River one day when I saw the traces of tree branches floating in the water. It made me think about the idea of traces: how we use certain objects to express the disappearances of other things. After that, I started using traces of found materials in my own work, and eventually began collecting abandoned electronic parts bit by bit.

DOUG: Where do you get your main source of inspiration from?

BONG JUNG: I get different ideas from my day to day life, in my surroundings and from my own imagination.

DOUG: Do you have any goals for the future?

BONG JUNG: My ultimate hope is for my artwork to change the world in a positive way, even if it’s just a little bit. And I plan on working until my very last minute to make that happen.

Addiction494, 2018, Mixed Media on Card Board, 58 x 43 inches

DOUG: Do you have any advice for other people who want to become artists?

BONG JUNG: Painting makes me happy, but it’s easy for artists to get sad sometimes. Just don’t give up on your work. No matter how hard it is, we have to keep using our natural gifts.

DOUG: Alright. Thanks for your time, Bong Jung.

BONG JUNG: Thank you.

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Addiction77, 2015, Mixed Media on Canvas, 80 x 72 inches

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LADO POCHKHUA

Georgian-Born Visual Artist Lado Pochkhua

Neon Portrait, 2018, Silkscreen, 18 x 25 inches

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG Lado Pochkhua is a Georgian-born visual artist whose refugee experience as a young adult, his subsequent post-Soviet identity, and his later move to America have shaped both his artistry and his political philosophy, culminating in a set of classically-inspired works that deal with the old ideals of aristocracy and amongst the new values of modern society.

Born in Sukhumi, Georgia in the region of Abkhazia in 1970, Lado Pochkhua entered the world during the Soviet Period and lived through a climactic moment of military conflict and instability. After graduating from the Sukhumi College of Art in 1993, the artist was forced to flee his hometown as a result of the Abkhazian War between the Georgian government and Abkhaz separatists. Pochkhua eventually found solace in Tskenti, a city near the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, and lived there in settlement with other refugees for eleven years. Throughout his stay in Tskenti, Lado attended the Tbilisi State Academy of the Arts, graduating from the school with a Master’s degree in Painting and Printmaking in 2001. Since then, Lado has lived and worked in a variety of different countries, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Hungary, and ultimately the United States.

The artist currently resides in New York City.

Accumulating academic knowledge throughout the entirety of his art career, Lado has always been especially interested in educating himself about the history and artistic practices of classical artists. Much of his artwork is created using the media of paint, pen and ink, and Pochkhua’s particular style revives the traditional techniques of painters and printmakers from previous centuries. As Lado Pochkhua imitates the older styles created by the great masters of the past, the artist explores a concept that is central to his work: the idea of “simulacrum,” a term meaning the representation or imitation of something.

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Portrait with the Silver Circle, 2018, Hand Drawn Image with the Silver Foil, 40 x 60 inches

While Lado always paints or draws his high-contrast, monochromatic images by hand, the references he uses are often old engravings, images which themselves were made to reproduce even older original works of art. But what if that older work of art no longer exists? What does it mean to create a copy of something that no longer has an original? What does it mean to create a copy of that copy? To Pockhhua, that is the meaning of simulacrum.

First encountering the idea of simulacrum through the late 20th/21st century writer Jean Baudrillard and his philosophical treatise, “Simulacra and Simulatio,” Lado Pochkua was enamored with the philosopher’s writings about a Jorge Luis Borges novel that depicted a map of a great empire that itself was as big as the land it described. This analogy was particularly poignant for Lado: as someone living through the fall of the Soviet Union, Pochkhua could see firsthand how the map of his own country was changing, the borders being constantly redrawn.

Another work of literature that inspires Lado Pohkhua’s work is the Hans Christian Anderson story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. In this fable, while the clothes themselves are nonexistent, the Emperor, albeit naked, remains.

However, in the artist’s latest series, “The Book for the New Aristocracy,” that idea is reversed. Showcasing a set of portraits whose subjects are based on unspecified members of an antiquated Georgian nobility, Lado leaves the clothes and removes the noble instead. In this set of works, all of the accessories of royalty are still there, but behind them is nothing but empty space. The person is gone, and the only evidence of power that exists is the outfit.

When Lado Pochkhua first created these works of art, he thought it would be a singular series. However, given today’s political realities, particularly that of the United States, the artist’s works take on a new meaning. Just as in his portraits of nobles, the outfit of the presidency itself is empty, a set of clothes with naked space in the place of real power.

Yet Lado Pochkhua’s work was never intended to comment on the specific concerns of American culture. Most of Pochkhua’s art pieces feature a general kind of flaw or fracture that can apply to anyone or anything: fractured maps, fractured faces, fractured compositions. To Lado, fracturing seems like the perfect answer to the current zeitgest: our images consist of pixels, our attention span is scattered, and even the knowledge that we receive is fragmented: short video clips and social media posts have replaced operas and novels. In his mind, the world is no longer whole. Lado Pochkhua’s series seeks to address these issues as well as escape from them, attempting to transport the audience away from the present and either backwards or forwards in time.

Amongst Lado Pochkhua’s exhibitions throughout his career as an artist, one of the most notable presentations of his works was during the Prague Biennale IV at the Georgia Pavillion in 2009. Pochkhua’s solo exhibition was held at the Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery in 2013, and that same year, the artist’s works were also exhibited at the Brooklyn Box Gallery. Additionally, Lado’s works were presented at the Art Dubai Fair, Volta art fair Basel, and the Volta art fair in New York City in 2018.

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An Interview With Lado Pochkua

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

DOUG: I’m here with Lado Pochkhua, a Georgian-born painter, illustrator and sculptor, as well a participating artist in FLAG’s premiere show. Lado, what was your early life like in your home country?

LADO: It’s never an easy answer, because it’s a complicated political story. I was born in the city of Sukhumi in the region of Akhazia in Georgia - but the country was in the Soviet Union at the time. The situation was like matryoshka, Russian dolls: a big country with smaller political pieces nestled inside of it. That was my life. And then I became a refugee in the 90’s when the war started.

DOUG: So how did that experience as a refugee lead to your development as an artist?

LADO: I became a refugee at 24. I already graduated from an art college in my hometown and made my first steps as an artist when the Soviet Union collapsed. I fled with a group of other refugees to Tskenti near the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. As a refugee, you can do two things: either live in despair or put life in your own hands. I went with the second option. I enrolled in the Tbilisi State Academy of the Arts, and my art career took off from there - it was my first real experience in the art world.

DOUG: How did you develop your unique art style after that?

LADO: If you have a unique style, it’s because you’ve reached a third step in your career.

First you need to realize you’re an artist, then you need an education in the arts, and then you need to live in an art center of the world. That was New York for me. It could also be Tokyo, London, Rome - but it must be a great center of the arts. Moving to a place like that means you’re serious about your pursuit. You can’t stay in your comfort zone. It’s a hard place to live in, but before the city, I didn’t dedicate myself in the same way. There, I learned to limit myself in order to develop my style. This was the first time I created a body of work I liked.

The Name of the Game, 2018, Hand Drawn Image with the Silver Foil, 28 x 30 inches

DOUG: So what do you think about your art right now?

LADO: Art is interpretive. It speaks to people in metaphor. So we can translate things like political instability and total insanity into our work. Like our situation right now: every day is crazy and the president isn’t even trying to be presidential. It’s hard to believe that this office was occupied by so many other great men throughout history. It’s like the opposite of the Emperor’s New Clothes: we have the outfit of the presidency, but it’s an empty show of power with nothing behind it. It’s a copy of a copy that no longer exists: the postmodern concept of a simulacrum. My work pays attention to this emptiness of our times.

But someone else might turn it into something beautiful. Bad times equals great art. The Regan era had fantastic art, and now so does the Trump era. My art isn’t even about him, but it’s about the spirit of the time.

DOUG: Alright Lado, thanks for taking the time to speak with me.

LADO: Same to you.

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Madame Recamier in America, 2018. ​Mixed Media on the Silkscreen, 18 x 25 inches

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BOBBY ANSPACH

American Multimedia Artist Bobby Anspach

Place for Continuous Eye Contact 5, 2017, Sound and Light Installation

By Bobby Anspach An Apparently Messianic Artist Statement in a World Where Acknowledging That You Know That You Are Doing Something That Isn’t Really All That Acceptable Makes You More Accepted Because People Think They Are Connected to Their Thoughts So Pointing Out That You Think Something Similar to Them Makes Them Feel Connected to You. One time I saw the most beautiful world in the world inside my head. I told my brother to paint it. But he could only see the world inside of his head. So he didn’t know what I was talking about.

Then I traveled from one end of the universe to the other (it is shaped like a parabola).

I found out how to let go of words and become part of everything. But when the words came back there was something urgent that needed to be said. Because we are destroying the world. Which is needed in order to see the beautiful world in the back of your head.

So I decided I would make a giant painting to save to world from eating itself. I think it would have had like two p.o.v. paintings that are connected to each other and they would have been holding knives towards each other’s eyes while maybe holding each others genitalia or something, and it would have been instructions on how to see that when you hold onto beauty or run from fear you forget that you are part of everything and the world loses its color and it’s really uncomfortable and it’s what we have all been doing for the longest time.

I imagined that this would happen just before the world blows itself up which would cause a chain reaction and space-time would begin to collapse because the U.S. has so many bombs and everything is connected and string theory and stuff- at which point I would fly into space with my friend, stop off to get the universe starting seed from the good aliens, then telepathically communicate with my friend (via the face) and decide that I must continue on without my friend to restart the whole thing (even though

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Place for Continuous Eye Contact (Too Little Too Late to More People), 2017, Sound and Light Installation

we both knew the terrible amount of suffering that would come with starting the whole thing over again (being that we now knew that we were everything and everyone that had ever existed and would soon be once again (but we knew that it was worth it because finding out its all a dream and other people are real is pretty much the most beautiful thing that could ever happen (not to mention that there is only one moment or something so the suffering is sort of not real (but yes, I know, it sort of is which is why I made the painting in the first place))))).

Then I let go of the whole thing. And I wasn’t Jesus anymore.

Then God (or maybe a demon) told me to cut my eye out.

Then I ran away. But you can’t really run away from God (oh, and yeah, no God in the art world I think (see title)) Then I chased God. (but you can’t chase God because God is everything and chasing God means something other than what is here).

Then I apologized to God for not cutting my eye out and solving the mystery of the universe.

And now I am going to make the most beautiful sculpture in the world.

Place for Continuous Eye Contact 3, 2016, Sound and Light Installation

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KONSTANTIN MINDADZE

Georgian Multimedia Artist Konstantin Mindadze

Violet Rhomb, 2016, Oil Paint on Eight Triangular Linen Units, 48 x 28 x 2 inches

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG Georgian multimedia artist Konstantin Mindadze employs a variety of materials in his work to create large installations featuring visual, auditory and other sensory experiences.

Originally from the country of Georgia, Konstantin Mindadze studied at Grafisch Lyceum in Rotterdam and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, both visual art and design schools in the country of The Netherlands. In Amsterdam, Konstantin is a member of the Artists and Curators association Arti et Amicitiae, and in Goergia, Mindadze was a founder of the Contemporary Art Industry or CAI. The artist currently lives and works between the Dutch city of Amsterdam and the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.

Konstantin Mindadze uses various mediums throughout his art pieces, combining individual paintings, drawings, sculptures and videos to create expansive projects that are frequently installed in large-scale facilities. Occasionally working with audio as well, Mindadze temporarily becomes a sound artist for the sake of imbuing his environmental

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Spectral Rotation of Y (Dual Toned Sequence), 2019, Pigmented Acrylic Polymer Paint and Micrograph on Twenty-one Watercolor Handmade Papers, 271 x 15 x 1 inches

Hexane, 2019, Oil Paint with Amber on Acrylic on Seven Circular Shaped Linen Units, 91 x 75 x 2 inches

installations with an added layer of dimensionality. Konstantin has an interest in observing the changes of the things in the real world around him, sometimes modifying the aesthetics or configurations of his creations to reflect the parallel transformations and transitory nature of his own life’s experiences.

Mindadze’s original inception as an artist began with the demolition of the works he made during his studies. Konstantin constantly analyzes several dualistic topics throughout his work: the synthetic structure of the world, reactions in the realms of both biology and psychology, the cycle of life and death, existence and transience, love and loss, destruction and transformation, the role of advancing technology in increasing globalization, fears and religions, consumerism and commercialism, historical facts and processes of decay are all the basic themes to which the artist often returns.

Konstantin’s signature and ongoing series “fragmentations” relates to the issues of creation and destruction and creates an endless series of fragments composed of different types of materials. This series is based on philosophical ideals which strive to create Equilibrium and a kind of balance with minimalist shapes. Formed by differently configured fractured planes, the textures together create a work which is performed with the utmost precision and perceived by the artist as sculptural objects. Fragmented planes represent a continuation of one another, the distance between them and the empty spaces participating in the creation of the complete look of the artwork.

In the last few years the artist has created environmental installations for several long-term exhibitions presented in various exhibition spaces and major museums, in places such as Georgia, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States.

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EVAN VENEGAS

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

Lost Grid 321, Acrylic on Canvas, 24 x 24 inches

American Abstract Watercolorist Evan Venegas

Lost Grid 1417A, Acrylic on Canvas, 14 x 17 inches

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Even Venegas is primarily a watercolor artist whose highly refined style consists of intricately intertwining colors and shapes painted to represent the complexities of his environment.

Born and raised in Queens, New York in 1975, artist Evan Venegas left his hometown to study at the San Francisco Art Institute and earned his BFA in Painting in 1998. While the painter always had a sensitive side as many other artists do, showing any shred of sensitivity was in many ways a liability for a boy growing up in a blue-collar Queens neighborhood. Later in life, however, Venegas learned that extreme empathy can be an asset as well, and this newfound revelation had a permanent impact on his artistry. Now, Evan refers to a sense of hyper awareness and connectivity to the feelings of other people with the term, “Emotional Data,” and uses his heightened sensitivities to create sophisticated works of art. The artist has since returned to Queens with a different outlook on the world and continues to work there today.

Evan first started painting as a means of improvising and organizing the contents of his mind. Seeing his inner dialogue reflected upon paper expanded his sense of consciousness and spurred him on to share his experience of personal enlightenment with others through art. With the intention of inspiring a change in the perspectives of people who view his work, Venegas is constantly developing an artistic technique that can best result in this perceptual transformation. Collecting disparate bits of emotional data from his daily surroundings, the artist reconfigures his experiential information internally and expresses it through his work.

The artist’s Lost Grid series uses shapes like individual pieces of a puzzle that his viewers can assemble into their own unique and personal interpretations: some of the many objects that his audience have discovered in the paintings are mechanical parts, pieces of anatomy, architectural structures, and the symbols of language. To Evan Venegas, there is no right or wrong answer, and he enjoys encouraging the viewers of his works to develop creative dialogues amongst each other and inside themselves.

The major source of inspiration for the artist’s Day Map paintings was the birth of his daughter: using the delicate medium of watercolors along with basic shapes and a subtle use of color, Evan creates a soft sense of fragility, something felt by every parent after the delivery of a newborn baby. Initiating the creation of these paintings by assembling and assigning values to various Emotional Data such as activities, events, and situations, Venegas then translates the information into colors and circles of assorted sizes. In this set, the artist endeavors to exhibit a single completed unit while also depicting the discrete pieces that construct it.

Evan Venegas’s numerous group exhibitions include “Round It Up!” at the Miruel Guepin Gallery in Manhattan and “STREET LIFE” (gruppe udstilling) at Galerie Wolfsen in Aaolborg, Denmark. Venegas’s public collections include medical centers such as the Hospital for Special Surgery and the New York Presbyterian Hospital. In 2015, Evan was honored with the Community Supported Arts and Design Award, and in 2017 he was a recipient of an Award for the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

Lost Grid A29, Acrylic on Canvas, 72 x 62 inches

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Ekaterina Abramova

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

Balance, Acrylic, Gold Leaf and Gold and Silver Ink on Canvas, 40 x 24 inches

Russian Visual Artist Ekaterina Abramova First of Mankind, 2016, Acrylic, Gold and Silver Ink on Canvas, 24 x 20 inches

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Russian-born artist Ekaterina Abramova is a divinely-inspired, multifaceted artist who uses traditional techniques to create a special style that merges 21st century Neo-Expressionism and Spiritual Ornamentalism.

Born in Moscow, Russia in 1979, Ekaterina Abramova graduated from an art school with honors and continued her studies at the Moscow Vasnetsov College of Fine Arts until completing her degree in 1999. In 2007, she received her MFA from the I.E. Repin State Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia, and eventually moved to the metropolitan area of New York City several years later, where she lives and works today.

A world traveler, visionary painter and in some ways a modern-day mystic, Ekaterina is heavily influenced by the symbolic folk art of various people around the globe, most notably the mythologies of ancient Russian and Indian culture. Abramova draws from various religious beliefs as a source material and merges them together through a range of artistic media as diverse as her inspirations, including oils, acrylics, watercolors, markers and more.

To Ekaterina Abramova, the main reason she paints is to search for “Man:” a spiritual ideal of humanity that she desires to dig out and bring forth from all of those who view her artwork. Her ultimate mission is to inspire others to be (and to free) themselves. Channeling information from the subtle spheres to the material world by using the imagery of color, symbols and shapes on canvas, Abramova seeks to help people fine-tune their unique inner frequencies and connect to their higher selves. Ekaterina sees herself as a tightrope walker on a line between worlds, balancing herself with brushes in her hands and connecting the dimensions like a bridge joining two separate continents.

The artist’s numerous awards include but are not limited to the Gold Medal for the 250th Anniversary of the Russian Academy of Arts, the Gold Medal for “National Treasure” of the International Charity Fund “Philanthropists of the Century,” the Peacekeeper Fund Medal, and the international Van Gogh Award for “AVISHKAR - 2016” from the Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Calcutta and London. The artist was also nominated for the United States Presidential Scholarship in the Arts and serves as a member of several art groups such as the Union of Russian Artists, Art Fund International, the Creative Union of Professional Artists, and the Art Indulge Foundation.

Additionally, Ekaterina was awarded a 3-month International Artist Residency at the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation located in the Mana Contemporary Art Complex in Jersey City, NJ, which she had completed in the end of 2016. In 2018, she completed an International Graphics Arts Festival Residency at the University of Khairagarh in Chhattisgarh, India, and an exclusive Art Residency at the Central University of Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath of Varanasi, India, where she also taught a course in Art Studies.

Abramova has had her work featured in numerous group exhibitions all around the world, as well as many solo shows throughout Europe, Asia and the USA. Some of her works can be found amongst museums and private collections in New York, the UK, France, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, China, and India.

Self-portrait, 2017, Acrylic, Gold Leaf and Gold and Silver Ink on Canvas, 40 x 44 inches

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KHATIA ESARTIA

Georgian-Born American Watercolorist Khatia Esartia Fear, 2018, Acrylic on Canvas, 30 x 26 inches

No Fear, 2018, Acrylic on Canvas, 30 x 26 inches

2010, 2014, Watercolor, Mixed Media on Paper, 16 x 20 inches

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG Khatia Esartia is a Brooklyn-based, American-Georgian visual artist whose personal history as a child escaping a war stands in stark contrast to the whimsical watercolor works she creates as an adult.

Born in 1978, young Khatia Esartia was living in Gagra, Georgia until the Abkhaz war erupted in the early 90’s, leading to a near genocide of the local Georgians in the area.

Luckily, Khatia’s family escaped the oncoming ethnic cleansing before it struck, and they fled the United States, where the artist has lived ever since. Esartia has always had a strong interest in the arts, receiving a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001 and then obtaining an MA from Christie’s in New York in 2013.

First learning watercolors from the basement of a church following her flight from the chaos of war-torn Georgia, Khatia Esartia quickly learned that this particular medium of painting was like another form of chaos - watercolors are notoriously capricious and temperamental. And while Khatia’s works seem to have been made in a flurry of brushstrokes and spontaneous movement, her process is actually much more tedious, requiring hours or even days of planning in addition to numerous sketches in order to properly control the difficult medium. In Esartia’s watercolor cartoons, the steady control of light, color and line are perfectly and painstakingly balanced to create eccentric but charming narratives with a bright and playful style that feels completely opposite to the conflict she fled from as a child.

The artist’s latest solo exhibition was “Out of the Cave” with Marisa Newman Projects in New York City in 2019. In the same year, Khatia completed a residency with the Ria Keburia Foundation in Kachreti, and also traveled to the Free University in Tbilisi as a visiting professor for the Visual Arts department. Both cities were located in Esartia’s home country of Georgia.

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Douglas Tausik Ryder is an American artist whose organic sculptures merge earthly materials with modern technologies to create a sensual style that stands at the center of geometric artifice and natural forms.

Born in New York and now based in California, sculptor Douglas Tausik Ryder first began using industrial and technological processes to create his novel works in 1992. Starting from source materials such as technical drawings, scans and photographs as well as stereographic .STL files, Douglas uses Computer Numerical Control or CNC machines to carve his threedimensional pieces to perfection. A technique most often used in the manufacturing of metals and plastics for commercial products, Tausik’s implementation of CNC results in highly refined sculptures on another level of craftsmanship. Once the parts are created, the high-tech artist then painstakingly assembles and finishes his works of art by hand, merging mechanical capability with human artistry. Realized in materials such as wood, bronze and resign, all of his sculptures have relied on this means of manufacture since 2005.

Douglas Tausik Ryder’s pioneering use of code to drive computer-assisted sculpture making is often seen as one of the first examples of such a process, and he is the only known artist to own his own personal industrial CNC machine tool, meaning his pieces are created without any outside fabrication.

Ryder’s new solo show, “Body Language,” references European, American and Californian art-making through heroically scaled Cherrywood laminations that fuse sensual natural forms with the technical means of production.

Douglas’s work has been shown previously at Jason Vass, Guild Hall, East Hampton; NY, and the University of Pennsylvania. His pieces are also in noted private collections including that of Tom Ford and Richard Buckley.

American Industrial Sculptor Douglas Tausik Ryder

Venus, 2017, Wood, 96 x 95 inches

Reclining Nude, 2019, Wood, 64 x 71 inches

DOUGLAS TAUSIK RYDER

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

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OXANA KOVALCHUK

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

Do I Belong Where I Am Now? 2019, Wood, Light, Glass, Transparency Film, Pencils, Paints, 13 x 15 x 3.5 inches

Kazakhstan-born Oxana Kovalchuk is a multimedia artist whose multicultural experience has a strong influence on her artwork through the presence of themes such as boundaries, identity, and memories.

Born in 1979 in the former Soviet Union country of Kazakhstan, Oxana Kovalchuk has always been someone with a keen interest in the arts, as well as an avid interest in education. From 1990 to 1994, Oxana attended the Pavlodar School of Art in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. Then, two years after graduating, she enrolled in Omsk State University in Omsk, Russia, receiving a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2001 and another bachelor’s in Economics in 2002. Nearly two decades after that, Kovalchuk returned to her original love of the arts, pursuing an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and solidifying her career as a professional artist.

The artist now lives and works in New Jersey, and has exhibited in several group exhibitions throughout the metropolitan area.

Employing a myriad of materials from every objects to organic substances, Oxana Kovalchuk’s signature style is the creation of threedimensional collages in the form of multi-layered lightboxes. Personal photographs, magazine clippings, internet printouts, hand drawings and more are taken from separate sources and consolidated as a cluster of images like the records of events found in the pages of a scrapbook. Using transparent sheets of glass between the confines of the back-lit boxes to create several levels of imagery, Oxana designs a new reality in multiple dimensions, juxtaposing disparate images like the real and fictional elements of a memory. Using this technique, Kovalchuk expresses how memories are constantly changing, transforming over time and obtaining influence from experiences and perceptions. Moving from place to place throughout the years and shaped by her ever-shifting environment, Oxana Kovalchuk’s own personal narrative exists in a state of perpetual flux.

Blurring of the Boundaries, 2019, Wood, Light, Glass, Transparency Film, Pencils, Paints, Piece of Plant, 13 x 15 x 3.5 inches

Kazakhstani-Born Multimedia Artist Oxana Kovalchuk

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Never fully belonging, 2019, Wood, Light, Glass, Transparency Film, Pencils, Paints, 13 x 15 x 3.5 inches

George Gagoshidze is a Georgian artist whose organic artworks are influenced by the natural environment of his home country.

Born and raised in the capital city of Tbilisi, Georgia in 1983, George Gagoshidze attended the J. Nikoladze Tbilisi State Art School from 1998 to 2002 and the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts from 2002 to 2007. George has worked and lived inside his namesake nation for the entirety of his career as a professional artist, and the impact of his long and unbroken experience in Georgia is present throughout the contents of his artistic creations.

Working in traditional media such as drawing and painting, George Gagoshidze’s major souce of inspiration stems from nature. Enclosed by a region of dense forests and mountainous landscapes, George exists in an area where the beauty of the earth is evident and ubiquitous. Viewed from afar, the natural forms of the country take on abstract shapes, the angular features of rock formations and the patterns of trees blending together like a work of nonrepresentational art. Galvanized by the visage of these earthen creations, Gagoshidze takes to the world upon his own canvas, merging the two separate dimensions of abstraction and realism to create a colorful and organic aesthetic that resembles an imaginative version of the flora and natural features of the environment of his home.

George Gagoshidze has won several awards for his works, such as Best Painting for “Bank of Georgia” in 2004 and the Visual Award for Best Graphic Artwork for “Giraffe” in 2017, both in Tbilisi. The artist’s works were featured in several solo exhibitions in his own country, as well as in multiple group events and exhibitions around the world, such as the Shirin Art Gallery in the Islamic Republic of Tehran in 2011, the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair in Turkey, the Contemporary Vilnius Art Fair in Lithuania, and the Bejing International Art Biennale in China; all in 2017.

Untitled, 2017, Watercolor and Acrylic on Paper, 47 x 78 inches

Untitled, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 39 x 79 inches

Georgian Abstract Artist George Gagoshidze

George Gagoshidze

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

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ALPANA MITTAL

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

Dream Reflections # 10, 2016, Beads on canvas, 24 X 30 inches

Indian-born Alpana Mittal is a versatile artist whose specialty is the use of multicolored beads on canvas in order to create modern representations of traditional Indian stories and ideas.

Emerging into the world in the arms of a loving art family, Alpana Mittal, also known by her pseudonym “Tejaswini,” was exposed to art at an early age and has lived with it throughout her entire life. Alpana obtained an MFA in Fine Arts from the Chaudhary Charan Singh University in Meerut, India in 2001 as well as a certificate in Arts Administration from New York University in 2010.

While Alpana Mittal has always worked in the realm of the arts, it wasn’t until recently that she discovered her love of beads. After purchasing an art kit for her daughter as a present for the Christmas of 2008, Alpana saw the little girl create small birds and flowers using beads provided in the gift.

Struck with a flash on inspiration, Mittal mirrored the designs of her child in her own work, employing the subtle shapes of the beads to create a texture that resembles the mosaics of ancient art. Tejaswini’s latest bead art series “Dream Reflections” makes a strong use of these decorative designs, her style closely resembling the community and religious ornamentations common throughout East Asia, from the symbolic Tibetan Mandalas to the sacred Bengali floor patterns known as Alpana.

Tejaswini has won several awards for her works: her painting of the Hindu god “Krishna” was judged “Best In Show” in the Hudson County Art Exhibition in 2013, and she received an “Outstanding Service” award from Sing for Hope in 2019 for “Basant Utsav,” a piano that the artist painted and donated to the organization. Several of Alpana Mittal’s art pieces can also be found in private collections in Asia as well as North America.

Indian-Born Visual Artist Alpana Mittal AKA “Tejaswini”

Dream Reflections # 01, 2013, Beads on Canvas, 48 X 36 inches

Dream Reflections # 03, 2013, Beads on Canvas, 36 X 30 inches

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You are Beautiful, 2015, Mixed Media on Canvas, 96 x 48 inches Beyond Silk Road 1, 2009, Mixed Media on Canvas, 48 x 48 inches

HyungKyung Ryu

Heritage I & II, 2017, Mixed Media on Canvas, 29 x 57 inches

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG Korean artist HyungKyung Ryu is a painter whose reflective pieces exhibit the influences of antiquity as well as modern commentaries about greed and wealth inequality.

HyungKyung Ryu was born and raised in Gyeongju, Korea, a site that served for centuries as the capital city of the ancient Silla Kingdom with a lengthy history and abundant heritage. Surrounded by museums and the scattered tombs of kings as a child, HyungKyung was strongly impacted by the art and architecture of centuries long past and imbues her works with shining styles reminiscent of relics and royal designs. Ryu continued to pursue her interest in art and received her MFA in Painting from the EWHA Women’s University in Seoul.

While the artist respected the richness of classical cultures in her venerable place of origin, moving to New York City gave her a new sense of mammonism ubiquitous in Metropolitan America. Feeling out of place amongst the industrial jungle of concrete buildings, HyungKyung Ryu expresses the city through her artwork with a rainbow of metallic colors and glimmering embossments that represent the cold stainless steel of monumental architecture, the glowing gold of greed, and the poor rusted irons of the lower classes. Preferring for herself the freedom to paint in poverty over the pursuit of money and the artificial status it provides, the artist is, regardless, ever aware of the growing gap in wealth inequality.

HyungKyung Ryu has shown her work in a variety of locations throughout South Korea and the Northeast United States.

Korean-Born Painter HyungKyung Ryu

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LEILA SHEliA

Georgian Abstract Painter Leila Shelia

Untitled 6, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 37 x 51 inches

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

Untitled, 2012, Oil on Canvas, 41 x 55 inches

Leila Shelia is a long-established painter whose major claim to fame as a figure in the art world comes from her status as one of the first female abstract artists in the country of Georgia.

Born in 1953 in Sokhumi, Georgia, Leila Shelia studied art at the Tbilisi Academy of Fine Arts and graduated in 1978, quickly solidifying herself as one of the earliest Georgian women to explore the artistry of abstraction in a traditional patriarchal society dominated by men. The painter’s primary oeuvre is closest to the movement of Informalism from the 1950s to the 1960s, a pioneering artistic development defined by a full freedom of expression and the rejection of control.

Leila’s non-representational paintings splash upon the canvas with daring and experimental mixes of contrasting colors, drawing inspiration from her inner mood and the irreal realms of her imagination. To Shelia, the abstract art style of her colorful compositions remains in her comfort zone, far away from the material world. Continuing to distance herself from realistic scenes as a result of the relative stability in her home country, the artist lacks an interest in reality due to her present lack of political inspiration and prefers to use her own personal mythology as a source material for her work.

Leila Shelia’s work has appeared all over the world throughout her career as an artist: since the 1990s, her oil paintings have been exhibited by galleries and museums in Greece, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, France and Spain. Her works are also preserved at the Shalva Amiranashvili State Museum of Fine Arts, and in the private collections of people such as Alexander Glezer in France, Leopold Bausbek in Austria, Per Gahrton in Sweden, and Johnston Sebastian and Nicholas Meinertzhagen in Great Britain.

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Manuchar Okrostsvaridze is a Georgian artist whose abstract sculptures, objects and designs feature the aesthetics of minimalism combined with ideological elements of dualism.

Born in 1794 in the city of Tbilisi, Georgia (then the Soviet Republic of Georgia), Manuchar Okrostsvaridze’s first steps in the art world were made from 1989 to 1990 by private lessons with nonconformist artists Omar Durmishidze and Albert Dilbarian, as well as academic drawing and painting classes at the post-soviet art school, where he studied from 1991 to 1997. Manuchar continued his education at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, where he graduated in 1998.

After graduating from university and continuing his pursuit as an artist in the outside world, Okrostsvaridze explored a variety of techniques and experimented with various media until he encountered the movements of conceptualism and post-minimalism. Although these influences did bring new concepts such as the theme of dualism into his work, it also limited his scope and reduced his artistic language. Now, refusing to believe that there is any one universal vocabulary for art, Manuchar lets each individual idea pursue its own unique direction rather than defining his artworks by a singular style. While minimalism continues to inadvertently dominate his work, Okrostsvaridze contemplates his ideas through multilayered installations that are open for wide and free interpretation.

Manuchar Okrostsvaridze’s lengthy exhibition history features a long list of solo and group shows locally in Georgia as well internationally in countries such as Germany, Lithuania, Russia, Spain, and the United States. The artist also authored and co-founded the Georgian art magazine “Impression” between the years of 2008 and 2009.

Untitled (Portrait as a Black Hole), 2018, 10 x 8 x 7 inches

Content Unavailable, 2019, Stainless Still, Led display, 98 x 78 inches

MANUCHAR OKROSTSVARIDZE

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

Georgian Mixed Media Artist Manuchar Okrostsvaridze

Untitled (Levitation), 2018, Stainless Still, 39 x 236 x 39 inches

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IRINA DESHCHENKO-LAKSHIN

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG

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Celtic dogs #2, 2014, Ceramic (Stoneware Clay Glazed and Fired in the Gas Kiln), 10 x 11.5 inches

Russian Ceramicist Irina Deshchenko-Lashkin

Medusa #2, 2011, Ceramic (Stoneware Clay Glazed and Fired in the Gas Kiln), 22 x 8 inches

Irina Deshchenko-Lashkin was born and raised on the Kamchatka Peninsula, a region in the far-east corner of Russia with a long and cold winter season.

Despite being a creative person from an early age, Irina was prevented from exploring her creative sensibilities by the hardships of the post-Soviet era at the end of the 90’s. Growing up in an unstable economy, no one could even think about being creative - so the future artist chose to pursue financial stability instead, getting a degree in economics from the All-Russian Academy of Foreign Trade and then a career in the banking sector, first in Kamchatka and then in Moscow.

However, Irina’s life began to shift in a different direction when she moved to the United States to join her husband in 2008. In 2009, she decided to explore an interest in pottery and took her first ceramics class from the Art School at Old Church in Demarest, NJ. Deshchenko-Lashkin immediately fell in love with clay, and after studying for several years under the guidance of different ceramics masters such as Michael Zakin, Deborah Goletz, and Bruce Dehnert, what started out as a simple hobby eventually lead to a passion so great that she decided to make it a lifelong career.

Within the next three years, she created her first “Medusa” series. Since 2013, Irina Deshchenko-Lashkin has exhibited her artwork in a variety of galleries, and many of her pieces can be found in private collections. In 2018, the artist received a Certificate of Fine Art from the New York Academy of Art, and she is currently attending an MFA program at the same school.

Irina was educated in a variety of techniques, having perfected her skills in both hand building and wheel-throwing. Now, the potter works with several different types of clay, such as stoneware, porcelain, and terra-cotta.

Deshchenko-Lashkin also uses different types of glazes and firing. While the style of the her works can be defined as contemporary, it references the art of the ancients and the classics as well, such as the motifs of Celtic artistry, and these ideas manifest themselves in the form of the artists’ interior decorative pieces such as vases, figures and wall sculptures.

Not quite a newcomer to the realm of ceramics but not yet a veteran of the art form either, Irina Deshchenko-Lashkin continues to develop her personal style as an artist, exploring new ideas and simply content, every day, to work with clay.

Red Carved Vase, 2016, Ceramic Porcelain Clay Glazed and Fired in the Gas Kiln, 5 x 5 inches

Surfer, 2014, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 67 x 61 inches

ROCKO IREMASHVILI

By Doug Rizio — Writer and Creative Director for FLAG Rocko Iremashvili is a Georgian painter whose artistry is characterized by a touch of humor and the feelings of freedom he seeks through the expressive process of making art.

Georgian artist Rocko Iremashvili was born in the country’s capital city of Tbilisi in 1979. Rocko attended the Tbilisi Iakob Nikoladze Art College from 1994 to 1996, and after graduating soon enrolled in the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University through the Faculty of Humanities for a degree in the Department of Fine Arts. Iremashvili then moved to Germany to study at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art on a DAAD Scholarship in 2005, and eventually received his MFA from the school in 2009. The artist was also a guest teacher of a master group at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tbilisi from 2010 to 2012.

For Rocko Ireshmavili, the phrase that art is an “exercise in freedom” is completely in line with his attitude to art and it makes the environment a real “sports hall” that is full of natural and artificial obstacles and barriers. To Rocko, never-ending overcoming obstacles and barriers can lead to acquiring newer, harder and more complex strengths. Ireshmavili believes that freedom is not an external state, but an inner one. To this artist, true freedom is not simply the bird that can sing only from the wide expanses of the open forest - but the one that still sings from within the confines of a narrow cage. Rocko Ireshmavili expresses these ideas through his eclectic series of works that often feature absurdist, non-sequitur and abstract ideas unbounded by the borders of a clearly delineated direction.

Rocko’s works have appeared in a variety of solo and group exhibitions in the galleries of Georgia, Germany, France, Iran and Austria.

Georgian Painter Rocko Iremashvili

Salomea, 2015, Oil on Canvas, 78 x 47 inches

Judith and Holoferne, 2015, Oil on Canvas, 78 x 47 inches

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Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform, a Baku-born art initiative with international outreach Despite strong government-led art institutions, Baku’s art scene was missing a truly independent and community-based space for artistic experimentation and professional development. While the large institutions in the city offer opportunities to young artists, they are limited and cannot fulfill all of the needs of the art community.

Launched on February 1, 2019, Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform aims to fill in the niche. With a gallery in the historic old city of Icherisheher, and a vintage flat near the urban core of Baku’s downtown, the platform fills in the niche in providing art professionals the opportunity to explore their ideas in depth. Programs to date include commissioned site-specific artworks, artist talks, professional coaching and workshops by local and international artists and curators to help grow Baku’s emerging art community and to support the discourse on Azerbaijani contemporary art.

Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform caught international attention with Turandokht. Radio Riddles migrating sound installation that was labelled an ‘alternative Azerbaijan pavilion’ during the professional preview of the 58th Venice Biennial.

The project was presented in the oldest and largest Venetian private garden within less than a month by a small group of enthusiasts. Coincidentally, a private garden was within walking distance from the Accademia Bridge and Campo San Stefano, where the traditionally Azerbaijan National Pavilion was situated. As a result, an opening of the National Pavilion on May 9 was chosen for showcasing Turandokht. Radio Riddles. The sound installation resulted from an earlier collaboration between artist Farhad Farzaliyev, poet Leyli Salayeva, musicologist Jahangir Selimkhanov and curator Asli Samadova. The amount of work and number of collaborators - over 40 actors, musicians, composers — involved in the creative process makes Turandokht. Radio Riddles one of the most complex artworks ever made in Azerbaijan. The project was inaugurated in December 2017 in Shirvanshakhs Palace, a 15th century UNESCO World heritage site. However, the creators felt that they had not yet found their audience: it was lost in medieval architecture and the main audience were tourists accidentally walking in the room with the sound installation.

The artwork touches many hot buttons of modern society in a series of interviews

ASLI SAMADOVA

and poetry recitals: culture and self-identity, solitude, empowerment, relationships and balance with oneself and outer world, setting priorities. These topics make Turandokht.

Radio Riddles a multilayer piece that requires time and concentration. It re-explores popular sound material, mixes and distorts it along with the text. So, Nessun Dorma, which is sung in by a tenor in Puccini’s opera Turandot, is voiced in the sound installation’s multiverse by a countertenor, a chorus of female voices and even a Vocaloid (computer programme). Another famous piece, Le Cygne by Camille SaintSaëns, illustrates the reverse journey of a classical European music piece into Eastern classical music traditions. The composition is recorded in Azerbaijan mugham* modes on the Medieval musical instruments mentioned in Nizami’s poetry. The modality of a riddle is continued in poetic texts translated into different languages.

The Venetian garden opened up new possibilities and pushed the creative boundaries for artist Farhad Farzaliyev who engages in anthropological research on the Azerbaijan cultural context and the cataloguing of striking forms of neo-folklore. With the nonlinear narration and overlapping sound, Turandokht. Radio Riddles offered a unique experience to each visitor: interaction is personal and unique since one’s body placement, even its slight tilt or move would affect what a person would hear in a given moment. The further one walks and the longer one listens to the radio emissions, the deeper and more confessional they become. For numerous visitors Turandokht. Radio Riddles was perceived as a poetic multiverse of possibilities and a refuge from reality, a spiritual delve into a polyphony of sound in an attempt to reach catharsis.

The role of Asli Samadova as a curator of the project and founder of Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform was to consolidate right people and resources to create high impact event within minimal time and limited resources. Since Venice event doing ‘high impact projects with little or no investment’ has become main priority of Ta(r)dino 6 in promoting contemporary art from Azerbaijan. * Azerbaijan polyphonic folk music traditions. In total, there are seven main modes aka. mugham (Rast, Shur, Segah, Shushtar, Bayaty-Shiraz, Chahargah, Humayun)

Milan/Berlin/Baku-based curator and museum specialist experienced working with leading cultural institutions in Europe and USA on cultural diplomacy, education and exhibition projects (V&A Museum, UK; GWU Textile Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA; Islamic Art Museum of Berlin, Germany; Pinacoteca di Brera, Italy; National Academy of Sciences, Italy; UNESCO, Goethe Institut, etc.). Founder of Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform that promotes contemporary art from Azerbaijan and beyond. With a gallery in the historic old city of Icheri Sheher, and a vintage flat near the urban core of Baku’s downtown, the platform fills in the niche in providing art professionals the opportunity to explore their ideas in depth. Programs to date include commissioned site-specific artworks, artist talks, professional coaching and workshops by local and international artists and curators to help grow Baku’s emerging art community and to support the discourse on Azerbaijani contemporary art.

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What the Art Buyer Sees “Art is not what you see, it’s what you make others see” – Edgar Degas, French artist (1834-1917)

I agree with this statement, which switches things around nicely, so that instead of thinking only about our own point of view as the creator of art, we also look at things from the point of view of the audience, client or customer.

In the context of combining art and business, Degas helps us to think about marketing and quality in useful ways. I suggest that: Marketing is about looking at things from the point of view of the customer (or “audience” or “client” if you prefer).

Quality is not what you put into it, but what the customer gets out of it.

I’m sure Edgar Degas would agree.

Furthermore, what you ‘make others see’ might be a variety of different things.

According to Charles Leadbeater in his essay ‘The Art of With’, the writer Umberto Eco “long ago declared that works of art were open to multiple interpretations; the reader was as active in creating meanings as the writer.”

In business terms, we need to be open to these various ‘meanings’ or ‘customer interpretations’ because otherwise there can be a big difference between what you think you are selling and what the customer is actually buying. What you consciously or unconsciously ‘make others see’ could be a lifestyle, a ‘feelgood factor’, or maybe a ‘talking point’ or a ‘story’ when a customer buys your art.

What both Degas and Eco are saying is that we need to be aware that other people (the audience/reader/consumer/customer) might see things differently than we do.

Understanding how clients see things and perceive customer benefits helps

creative entrepreneurs to become even more successful in terms of marketing, pricing and choosing the right customers.

So the questions becomes: What are you selling, really?

Or to put it another way, what is it that the customer is really buying from you?

The most aware businesses fully understand precisely what the customer is buying from them and increase their prices in line with the increased value that customers obtain.

Hong Kong fashion design company Dialog Ltd ran a project called Hope Tees that designed and manufactured t-shirts to raise money for a worthy cause. The customer was buying much more than a simple garment: they were investing in hope. Hope for the disadvantaged communities the project supported. The customer might never wear the t-shirt, but the “feel-good factor” they take away makes the investment excellent value for money. Fundamentally, they are not really selling t-shirts: they are selling hope.

And as Simon Sinek says in his Golden Circle TED talk: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could see our businesses through the eyes of customers?

Or, in the words of the Scottish poet Robert Burns: “Oh, that God the gift would give us To see ourselves as others see us.”

David Parrish

David Parrish is a business adviser to artists and other creatives worldwide. His marketing book is “Chase One Rabbit: Strategic Marketing for Business Success. 63 Tips, Techniques and Tales for Creative Entrepreneurs”. www.davidparrish.com

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The Immigrant Artist Biennial is set to launch in 2020 Launching for the first time across New York City in March 2020, The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) under the title: HERE, TOGETHER! will present multidisciplinary exhibitions and events featuring critically engaged contemporary art made by US-based immigrant artists from around the world. Spanning across several exhibition venues including the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA Project Space), The New York Art Residency and Studios (NARS) Gallery, Green-Wood Cemetery, and Artists Alliance, as well as numerous other venues yet to be confirmed, TIAB sets out to form an international dialogue through exhibition of ambitious projects, performances, panels, interventions etc with an aim to facilitate a diverse and experimental discourse as well as build a globally connected and united community.

I am the Founding Director and Curator of the first iteration of the biennial, with the support of a diverse team and fiscal sponsorship provided by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). TIAB aims to build a platform for exchange and presentation of projects by often overlooked and silenced voices at a time of unrest, discrimination, and exclusion. Beginning in April 2019, we have utilized a series of soft launch pop up fundraising events at various venues which align with our mission and are mostly managed and directed by immigrant cultural producers, artists and curators, such as Radiator Gallery in Queens, Assembly Room on LES, East Village Art View in Manhattan as well as the new Art & Social Activism Festival. We are currently working on our crowdfunding campaign at Kickstarter, where I am a Creator-in-Residence, launching early November.

My intent in developing TIAB has been to not only celebrate the fantastically multicultural and vibrant fabric and the very foundation of the US society, but to highlight and expose the extraordinarily valuable and significant contributions immigrant artists make to it, as well as establish an urgent and innovative relationship between artists and audiences. The idea for the biennial itself has been brewing in my mind for a while, inspired by my own story of double migration, form Ukraine to Australia to the US, as well as my ongoing work with immigrant artists in NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. I finally pulled my resources together

Katya Grokhovsky

and took the plunge in 2019, establishing the project publicly, seeking support, team members and producing a model, which initiates ethical funding, involving mainly immigrant-owned businesses, crowdfunding and fiscal sponsorship. I am interested in fighting separation with unity and togetherness, segregation and erasure with community, oppression and prejudice, with support and care.

The premier presentation of The Immigrant Artist Biennial will be conceptualized around the theme of otherness, separation and alienation and will select overseas-born immigrant artists, based in US, who work in difficult to define mediums, such as interdisciplinary works, performances, installations, ephemeral mediums, sound, sculpture, video, digital and virtual technologies, text, books, public art.

The Immigrant Artist Biennial is based on the premise of equal gender and race representation, highlighting the inequality and bias which is still prevalent in the art world today. TIAB is designed to attract a diverse audience, both within the existing artworld networks and broader immigrant and multicultural communities nationally and internationally.

Yali Romagoza, Normal Is Good: I like America and America likes me, 2016

Katya Grokhovsky was born in Ukraine, raised in Australia and is based in NYC. She is an artist, curator, educator and a Founding Artistic Director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) and Feminist Urgent (FU). Grokhovsky holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from Victorian College of the Arts and a BA (Honors) in Fashion from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Grokhovsky has received support through numerous residencies and fellowships including Kickstarter Creator in Residence, Pratt Fine Arts Department Artist in Residence, Wythe Hotel Residency, Art and Law Fellowship, The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) Studios Program, BRICworkspace Residency, Ox-BOW School of Art Residency, Wassaic Artist Residency, Atlantic Center for the Arts Associate Artist in Residence, Studios at MASS MoCA, VOX Populi Curatorial Fellowship, NARS Residency, Santa Fe Art Institute Residency, Watermill Center Residency and more.

She has been awarded the Brooklyn Arts Council Grant, NYFA Fiscal Sponsorship, ArtSlant 2017 Prize, Asylum Arts Grant, Chashama space to create grant, Australia Council for the Arts ArtStart Grant, NYFA Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists, Freedman Traveling Scholarship for Emerging Artists and others. Her work has been exhibited extensively. katyagrokhovsky.net / theimmigrantartistbiennial.com

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Natia Bukia and Salome Vakhania PROJECT ARTBEAT interviewed y Nino Macharashvili (Curator and Director at FLAG ART GROUP

has a different location for each exhibition, we decided to go to people instead of them coming to us. Recently we decided to open a permanent space in Tbilisi as well, so that when our Moving gallery is travelling we can offer our visitors exhibitions in Tbilisi. Last but not least Art Fairs are a major part of our programme, we have so far participated in around fifteen Art Fairs such as Art Dubai, Contemporary Istanbul, Volta Basel and NYC, Start at Saatchi gallery etc.

Natia Bukia (left) and Salome Vakhania for VOGUE

Let’s begin with your start-up. What factors in the Georgian and Caucasian art scenes moved you to establish the online platform, Project ArtBeat? And, what made you decide to go beyond your online scope?

Project ArtBeat is the result of three friends’ mutual wish to nurture and promote Georgian contemporary art both locally and internationally. In addition we are aiming to create an environment in Georgia that will act as an artistic hub for the region. We believe that artists from post-Soviet countries still haven’t had a chance to express their full artistic potential internationally. Let’s take Art Fairs, the number of artists from post-Soviet countries you come across during fairs is very limited, it is time to expand the canon. In order to do so artists need to be accessible internationally and the best way to do so we believe is via the internet. At the moment we are mainly working with Georgian artists but soon we are planning to have some changes. From the beginning we never wanted to only work with a selected few collectors and art lovers, we were inspired to reach as many people as possible, a crowd that does not usually attend exhibitions. With our Moving Gallery, which is a shipping container that

What major developments have occurred in the Georgian and Caucasian art scenes since Project ArtBeat was established?

It would be too ambitious to say that in the last two years we have caused major art developments in the region but I believe with active international representation of our artists through Art Fairs, press coverage from main art magazines and newspapers such as Observer, Artnet, Artsy, Calvert22, Blouinartinfo etc. and collaborations with foreign artists such as Oscar Murillo, Brian Griffin, Jesse Darling and Takeshi Shiomitsu, we are definitely pushing the Georgian Art scene to the right direction. I can even say that our active participation motivated other Georgian galleries which had never take part in Art Fairs before to participate. I find it exciting because the more Georgian galleries are active internationally the higher the exposure to the Georgian artists will be. When we started we didn’t have anyone to ask for an advice it was tough but by following our instincts and hard work we managed to find our way around. However, the most important part of my work is to observe how our artists have developed since working with us. To name a few: organising Irakli Bugianis first solo show at the D. Shevardnadze National Gallery, followed by the publication of his first catalogue was an amazing experience. Also being able to witness how photographer Beso Uzndaze started painting in the last year or so is incredible, one moment he is a photographer and next moment he becomes a very talented painter as well. At the moment we are working with 27 artists out of which only 7 of them are female. I hope that we will change that soon and the ration between female and male artist be equal.

How about art collectors? Has there been an increase in the number of collectors since Project ArtBeat was established?

I think this is the biggest challenge in Georgia for us. Since Georgia is not a wealthy country, there is little culture of becoming a collector, people just buy art works here and there, without any structure or consistency. There is only one so called collectorbased Tbilisi, who buys from time to time, but other dealers are so desperate, we haven’t even tried to approach that person. However, we have started working with lovely young collectors who are placing their trust in us and hopefully our relationship will grow together with their collections; we really enjoy working with them. In my opinion to be a collector one has to support artists that they believe in throughout their career, we hope to be the bridge between people who care about art and our artists. In addition we aim to change people’s perspective and make visual art more appealing than a Chanel bag.

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The Challenges for Contemporary Art in Central Asia There’s a problem with developing contemporary art in any former Soviet country. If the West is trying to democratise the role of the artist and audiences and develop art as a medium for social observation… in Central Asia art is being turned into a weapon for inventing or re-establishing state national identity.

For 70 years the Communist Party spun the lie that “art belongs to the people”.

It didn’t. Art belonged to the Communist Party, who controlled the commissioning, distribution and sale of art. Artists were just producers in the value chain. Culture is therefore not perceived with suspicion, and monthly family expenditure on culture is low.

In the last 25 years little money has gone into reforming Ministries of Culture. The Arts are too far down the international development priority list. Central Asian administrations have continued the Communist Party role as being Ministries OF Culture, rather than Ministries FOR Culture. So, culture has become a government instrument rather than an enabler of people’s self-expression. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, Islamic madrassas now outnumber state schools, so money for culture has been diverted into developing state school folk orchestras. In Uzbekistan the new regime sees art as a potential tourism revenue earner. A new contemporary arts hub has been rapidly created with state money, but no Uzbek artist has been advising on the needs of local artists, and the exhibitions are all of international cultural institutions.

It has been the international community that has been instrumental in developing a contemporary arts scene. The Swiss Development Corporation, the Open Society

Institute, the Agha Khan Culture Foundation, and the San Francisco-based Christensen Fund, among others play a key role. This intervention is only 20 years old and the scene includes only 50 artists, but it is a strong regional collective and one that gives voice to young intellectuals. Contemporary arts events in the region are as much a gathering place of like-minded people, as a public presentation and sale of artworks. But this external funding makes contemporary artists recipients of funds from “foreign agents”.

The state education system has little space for contemporary arts. Teaching posts are for life and filled with an older generation that controls state art institutions. They were the Soviet dissident painters of the late 1980s early 1990s, and while their style is not Soviet it is distant from conceptual art and contemporary ideas. The students they teach are frustrated with their training, their lack of access to exhibition space, opportunities and their lack of recognition.

Yet in countries like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan there are small clusters of urbanists, arts researchers, conceptual artists and one or two exhibition spaces in each capital city that feed the minds of local youth. In Kyrgyzstan these beacons of culture include ArtEast, B’Art, Central Asia Arts Management Foundation, Group 705 and the Tolon Museum of Contemporary Art, which was founded in 2012 by a New York-based businessman and philanthropist Tolondu Toichubaev. In Tajikistan there is the Dushanbe Art Ground (DAG) or the Public Foundation “Sanati Muosir”, and the Bactria Culture Centre (BCC). In Uzbekistan the key players are the Bonum Factum Gallery with its project called ART + FACT which is a space for contemporary art and the Bukhara Photo Gallery.

Tim Williams, Director, Projects-Direct.Net Ltd

Tim Williams is a fellow of the UK’s Royal Society of the Arts and former Chair of the UK National Commission for UNESCO. He was team leader of the EU’s Culture and Creativity Program in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine until 2018. More recently his consultancy, Projects-Direct.net, advised the Swiss government’s program for contemporary arts development program in Central Asia.

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Who cares?

an excerpt from ‘On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere What is a curator? The platitudinous question evades definition and is refuted no matter how it is answered and despite how often it is asked.

The ever shifting role of the curator has doubtlessly been the center of often polarising debate amongst those whom the definition most severely affects, be they artists, cultural workers, educators, employers, marketing managers, and of course, curators themselves. This Medusa of a moniker is used by both the most powerful institutions that dominate the cultural landscape. Is everyone really a curator? Yes. And no. (Is it possible not to look?)

Although curators often work on projects in collaboration with others, such as designers, editors, writers, educators, etc., there is an element of bias inherent in this process, as the curatorial role is ultimately an embodied individual position. Curators are deeply embedded within market dynamics, and for those who take the title professionally, the act of caretaking is both compensated and compensating—their role as tastemakers is instrumental in determining what and whose artworks are shown (and therefore assigned value) when, where, and in what context. This process of visibility they enable ultimately drives both the accumulation of economic and social profit for the network of involved parties, the curator often acting as both an instigator and parasite, rather than parrhesiastes.

The rise of the transnational curator in the 1990s, articulated in the mounting number of group exhibitions and biennales, and now a hypermobile force in the

globalized world, led to both an increased demand for locally based expertise and the expansion of a privileged predominantly Western idea of contemporary culture, modernist ideas and histories. Naturally, an increase in the number of museums has resulted in the need for more curators, and subsequently the rise of graduate or certificate based curatorial programs in academia. The last several decades have seen the curatorial profession flooded, perhaps for the promise of incrementally rising salaries, not only by those who have graduated from such programs but also by artists, autodidacts, actors from nearly all fields from the likes of science and literature to advertising and marketing, and most often by women. While ‘curator’ is a relatively new title to be taken, self or otherwise assigned, embraced, rejected, celebrated or decried, no matter the individuals intention, it has, despite its surrounding controversy, been exposed to, or is perhaps even characterized by, notions of celebrity. The problematic notion of qualification within the field has led to an influx of competitive scurrying, paradoxically propelled by the desire to be the first to ‘discover’ new approaches to non-hierarchical thinking, to exhibition making, and critical discourse.

The role of the curator is doubtlessly a position of distinguished economic and social privilege paired with authority, and should therefore be weighted with responsibility. A responsibility to what, and to whom, however? It seems that the job description is refreshed and updated every time a new gadget leaves the factory assembly line...

Vanessa Kowalski

Vanessa Kowalski is a Polish-American curator, writer, editor and artist. She holds a BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and an MA in Curating, Mediating, and Managing Art from Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. After co-founding an alternative gallery space in Los Angeles, she has gone on to curate numerous exhibitions and series of public programming both locally and internationally. She is a co-founder and editor of we need to talk, a publication launched in Helsinki which looked at the art of the interview. She has kept a blog since 2016, www.pocketsize.gallery, which attempts to break down the idea of ‘women’s work’ by questioning what it means to be a woman and what it means to work. Her artworks and writing have been featured in books and publications such as Clog x Artificial Intelligence, Take Shape Mag, Precog Mag, Speed of Resin, and more. Her MA dissertation, ‘On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere,’ explored ideas of exhibiting artworks in the digital realm and the need for expanded practices of care in the curatorial field at large. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn as the Program Director of the NARS Foundation, an International Artist Residency Program dedicated to supporting emerging and mid career artists located in Sunset Park. www.vanessakowalski.com

Photo Credit: Sebastian Wolf

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WHO WE ARE Suah Sylvia Kim Founder & Publisher Nino Macharashvili Curator and Director Doug Rizio Writer and Creative Director Ebby Antigua Editorial Design Director

GALLERY CATALOGUE is produced by MPLUS Creative Media and Production Corp.

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SPECIAL THANKS TO Nine on the Hudson Editorial Contributors Asli Samadova David Parrish Kat ya Grokhovsky Salome Vakhania Natia Bukia Tim Williams Vanessa Kowalski Sherry Park Photographer Jane Cho Make-up artist FLAG Advisory Board: Chrissy Crawford Corredor Chrissy Crawford is an art advisor and founder of ArtStar, an online art gallery, which also exhibits at the Affordable Art Fair in New York.

Chrissy received her MA in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art-London in 2006.

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FLAG Art Group fortleeartgroup@gmail.com +1-201-561-6707 www.fortleeartgroup.com www.artsy.net/flag-art-group