Vajiko Chachkhiani at La Rinascente @ Salone Milan 2018

Vajiko Chachkhiani at La Rinascente @ Salone Milan 2018

Every year, during the Salone the Rinascente department store in the centre of Milan.s Duomo piazza, becomes a strong showcase and amplifier of creativity.

Chosen by the best brands to launch their new collections and by designers to present their visions, with poetical installations, engaging displays and innovative projects, Rinascente promotes an event that sets trends, reworks styles from the past and launches new ones.

Special attention is always given to art, through the commissioning of cultural projects by international artists.

This year saw the Georgian Vajiko Chachkhiani, ( born in Tbilisi, but now Berlin-based ) who was selected to represent his home country at the 2017 Biennale in Venice – create two site-specific projects:   Under the Midday Sun and Cotton Candy

 

 

Under the Midday Sun

Under the Midday Sun is an installation with big visual impact, told in 8 prototypes, which redesign the 8 store windows overlooking Piazza Duomo.

Each of them represents an unfinished sculpture of three subjects: a cotton picker, horse muscles and a tiger, surrounded by dry bushes, trees and above all by the wind, which modifies them, as time passes, and slowly brings them to disappearance.

This gradual disappearance metaphorically recalls the sacrifice of the physical labour, because cotton pickers are paid very little.

Today as in the past

 

The double nature, historic and contemporary, of this project is very well represented by the very quality of the sculptures: one part is reconstruction of historical pieces, the other is modern pieces.

A surprising, radical project that embodies the way shapes are conditioned by Nature. And by Life.

 

 

 

 

 

Cotton Candy Film by Vajiko Chachkhiani

The second is a film with an intimist mood that will be projected on the annex wall in Via Santa Radegonda.

Vajiko Chachkhiani  also created Cotton Candy for Rinascente, which describes the inner conflict of a grandmother who, during a circus show attended with her niece, recollects her entire life.

The inner dialogue which she faces for the first time generates a sort of personal conflict.

The show represents a rite of passage, and when the cotton candy falls to the ground, the woman feels freed from what oppressed her.

The music and background noise are the soundtrack that amplifies the strength of the audience experience.

 

After the event, the two artistic projects by Vajiko Chachkhiani will be included in the collections of international contemporary art museums.

 

 

About Vajiko Chachkhiani

Vajiko Chachkhiani (Tbilisi, 1985) lives and works in Berlin.

His works span across a variety of artistic media with a poetic and poignant vision.

He studied Mathematics and Informatics at the Technical University, Tbilisi, (Georgia) before turning to Fine Arts at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.

Later he studied under Prof. Gregor Schneider at Universität der Künste (UdK), Berlin.

Through his sculptures, films and installations, Vajiko Chachkhiani delves into existential questions about human life.

He interprets human activities, its history and conflicts, and vagaries through time using various artistic media, making an emphatic and persuasive statement.

Chachkhiani radically transforms the objects acquired from real world interactions or displaced from their original context, which he uses to make overt references to social and political history of his home country Georgia or collective memoir.

Vajiko Chachkhiani has been selected to represent Georgia at 2017 Venice Biennale.

In 2014, he received the prestigious 7th Rubens Promotional Award of the City of Siegen

 

 

La Rinascente, Milan

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