Created in Berlin, Giorgi Kuhalashvili’s series of urban landscapes presents a sensitive interpretation of the city, oscillating between observation and imagination. Painted in delicate pastel tones, with subtle transitions from different shades of grey to water-green glazes, as well as pink, magenta, and violet hues, the works reveal urban spaces not as precise topographical representations, but as emotional and atmospheric experiences.
The streets, squares, and green spaces are inhabited by people, pets, flowers, and trees. Rather than documenting Berlin realistically, the artist transforms observed fragments of everyday life into personal visions, merging external impressions with memories, emotions, and poetic associations. The city becomes a living organism in which nature, human presence and architecture exist in constant dialogue.
The miniature works intensify this intimate perspective: passengers in the Berlin underground, views of the city’s largest park, the Tiergarten, and imagined places appear like visual notes from a personal urban diary. Everyday scenes are transformed into dreamlike moments, suspended between reality and inner experience.
In this interplay between the visible world and subjective perception, the series connects to an artistic tradition associated with Expressionism. Like the Expressionists, the artist does not seek an objective depiction of reality, but rather explores how places are emotionally experienced and transformed through individual perception. For example, similar to the urban visions of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Berlin becomes not only a place to be observed, but a space to be felt. The works create poetic cityscapes in which Berlin appears simultaneously familiar and transformed: a space between reality, memory, and imagination.
Expulsion from Paradise
The small-format series ‘Expulsion from Paradise’ combines human bodies, plants, and flowers in poetic compositions that move between fragility and beauty. Painted in delicate shades of blue and ochre, the works evoke a sense of memory, dreams and lost states of harmony. Nature is not merely a background, but an equal participant in a symbolic narrative about human existence, intimacy, and transience.
Balancing serenity and melancholy, the series explores the timeless relationship between humanity and the natural world.
Giorgi Kuhalashvili’s selected works are part of the permanent collection of the Georgian Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi and are now on view at the Begegnungsstätte Spandauerstraße Community Center in Berlin-Mitte. Discover more about the exhibition online on the project website: www.e-mergingartists.art
By Lily Fürstenow
