June 2024
Elene Chantladze
Artist Elene Chantladze discusses life, work, and creative perseverance in conversation with Curator Founder Dan Golden, featuring an introduction by Anton Kern.
“I first saw Elene Chantladze’s work last year during Paris+ par Art Basel at LC Queisser’s booth, and immediately, I was struck by their uniqueness. At the fair, the Georgian gallery was presenting a solo presentation of her small-scale works, all of which made me look closer. I saw all the idiosyncrasies of the paper, the materials, and how she deals with the content of these materials: the harmony and the in-congruencies. Elene’s work is sort of in the tradition of folk art, but I felt then that the works didn’t quite fit in with anything else I knew, and I still feel this way. There is magic there; something touched a nerve, touched my soul. There’s a feeling that is evoked not tied to just the images she makes—it is something about the “space” the work puts you in.”
— Anton Kern
Elene Chantladze, საბავშვო ბანაკი (Children's Camp), n.d., gouache on cardboard, 8 5/8 x 9 7/8 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Photo by Phoebe dHeurle
I’d love to start our conversation learning about your early life in Georgia and how you developed your art practice.
I was born by the sea. The Supsa River flowed in front of my house. I would look out of the window of a two-story house; the water was swaying, and countless birds were flying over it toward the spring: unnamed geese and swans, birds with tufts. Fish were in the water. They know how to dance, they jumped, they moved towards the shore. If I say that fish are dancing, people will laugh at me and say I have gone insane. I started painting at the age of 17 in order to cope with life, not as a romanticized hero artist but as a person like anyone else, marked by those needs, without which life becomes terribly complicated.
In 2012, our city hosted a festival. A TV crew came to film the event. The artists arranged all their drawings on the walls in a specific way. My drawings were blown away by the wind, sometimes being stopped by the nails of the other objects. I collected them under a tree where people from Tbilisi came to see them. The journalists also took an interest in the works, and unexpectedly, I was awarded a prize. At that time, I mainly focused on the 2008 war.
I see my works as my children and miss them when they are gone.
Elene Chantladze, Untitled, n.d., gouache and wall paint on wood, 8 1/8 x 9 7/8 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Photo by Phoebe dHeurle
I understand you have an interest in fairy tales. Where did this interest originate? Are there certain stories you find yourself returning to and depicting in your paintings?
My works are born spontaneously, without a precise formal or iconological program. They are like flowers, which sprout by themselves. I don’t know myself what my works are about. They are quite diverse. I don’t like politics and try not to get involved in it. However, I produced many images depicting the war of 2008.
Elene Chantladze, Untitled, 2009, gouache on cardboard, 8 7/8 x 10 5/8 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Photo by Phoebe dHeurle
(Front) Elene Chantladze, Untitled, n.d., gouache on paper and cardboard, 9 1/4 x 8 5/8 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Photo by Phoebe dHeurle
(Back) Elene Chantladze, Untitled, n.d., gouache on paper and cardboard, 9 1/4 x 8 5/8 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Photo by Phoebe dHeurle
Your paintings depict beautiful landscapes, portraits, and scenes. Are these created directly from nature, your imagination, or both?
I cannot sleep, at least not easily. When I was raising my daughters, I would get up at all hours of the night with ideas of what to paint, flashes of what I saw on TV that day, histories I read in books, prophecies inscribed in dreams, and what I’d seen in the stones lining my riverbank as I traversed them. My formative bouts with elucidation at the local library left me over-encumbered. It was my most wonderful refuge in Tskaltubo.
(Front) Elene Chantladze, Untitled, n.d., gouache on paper, 13 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Photo by Phoebe dHeurle
(Back) Elene Chantladze, Untitled, n.d., gouache on paper, 13 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Photo by Phoebe dHeurle
You work with a surprising array of materials: from gouache, ballpoint pens, glitter, nail polish, and torn cardboard to stones, paper plates, and plastic. How do you select the materials you work with?
I once overheard an art teacher say that all one needed to know about painting is to fill; the sky overheard with faintest pink, labyrinthine pallets at the tip of a colored pencil, wax tip, match bit, maybe yesterday’s newsprint. First, I started to draw on stones, and then I thought, I don’t need to draw on stones all the time. Now, I want to check out what my drawings will look like on paper.
Since 1997, I have been drawing on paper. These were hard times. My pension amounted to seven Lari and sometimes was even lower. I had two daughters. One of them was widowed with two orphan kids. No one was in the mood to buy me materials and colors. I never asked anyone to buy me those. Then I read about Pirosmani and learned that one could use cinder or other materials to produce the works, and I started to use charcoal, juice of mulberry, sambucus, and beets. These were my materials, though they were not so easy to get either. Only the candy boxes the shops were getting rid of were available. I cut the papers from these boxes and used them as surfaces. I tried to find a way out of the situation.
A hospital (where I worked) was under renovation. Everyone tried to take home something useful. I took with me some old soviet stencil plates with the images of Lenin. I used them to produce drawings about the tragedy of Beslan in 2004 and for other works. At the moment, I am happy to have them at my home.
Elene Chantladze, installation view, Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Photo by Izzy Leung
Speaking of stone works, can you talk about the ones you showed recently at your Anton Kern exhibition?
This is a story about my drawing: First, I started to paint on cobblestones and wooden chips found at the seaside. After having read a book, I reproduced the characters on the stones, which I saw as the surfaces of foreign universes. Sometimes, they revealed the images, but the stones do not contain the civilization; they do not house any trains or planes, just the faces of humans, animals, and birds.
Elene Chantladze, Untitled, n.d., gouache and nail polish on cardboard, 9 x 12 3/8 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Photo by Phoebe dHeurle
What is your art practice like today?
I am not spoiled as a person with a lot of free time, but at least once a day I need to draw like a thirsty person needs to drink water. This is how things take their natural flow beyond my control. I don’t have a plan for specific details of what will happen. I did not know what a brush was. When I was a kid, we had balloons, colorful pencils, I did not have the luxury to possess a brush and started to paint with my little finger matches. I used them to paint the eyes of the characters. This is how i started to paint.
Do you have any words of creative advice, inspiration, or wisdom you wish to share?
I had hard times in life, I had to destroy a big part of my diaries. I was told that instead of burning them, I should have changed my name and saved the writings. But at that moment I was glad that I had burnt them and eliminated some sorrow. Since the little ones were born, my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I put their actions into the diary, I draw their fingers, record what they say, I give them small scripts, something that will fit a page or two, really tiny. When I am gone, they will read those and understand who their grandmother was and what kind of a soul she had.
“I see my works as my children and miss them when they are gone.”
—Elene Chantladze
Elene Chantladze (b.1946, Supsa, Georgia) lives and works Tskaltubo, Georgia. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zurich; LC Queisser, Tbilisi; Anton Kern Gallery, New York, and kaufmann repetto, New York. With artist Ser Serpas, she had an exhibition at Conceptual Fine Arts, Milan, and has been included the group exhibitions “girls, girls, girls,” curated by Simone Rocha at Lismore Castle Arts in Lismore Ireland, and more recently with Rooms Studio at M HKA in Antwerp Belgium. A publication The Gift to Irma with essays by Ser Serpas and Miciah Hussey is forthcoming.