In the age of nanotechnology and wireless networks when Internet speed boggles the imagination and Internet access is possible from nearly any place in the world users are still facing the loading indicator. This pop-up sign of the looped motion is becoming a certain ouroboros of modern time and being some kind of irritant, endlessly intruding in our daily life. It is the sign which creates the situation of expectation with no limited continuum and makes users even more angry.

This already strong integrated in modern cultural memory symbolism is the subject of research in the new series of works by Zurab Arabidze. In Mass Hallucination of Still Modernity series artist’s strict geometric minimalism transforms in medial minimalism criticizing modern society, which is now standing at the stage of “pending better existence” according to Arabidze.

Taken as a basis user's graphic interface of a computer program – throbber, as a digital sign, becomes a symbol of a new digital vision. Continual data downloading in Arabidze's video art arises anxious feeling of infinite expectation and at the same time reveals tension between observer and observation process.

A gradual mutation of computer interface appears in glass blocks series, where faceless particle with clear information code, multiplied in 24 parts, continues the theme of endless expectation of complex or changing image appearance on the the one hand, and on the other - this sketch of initially digital sign and its static fixation on the glass block, creates a new substantiality of throbber as one of the most important symbols of our age.

Only during the transferring process of information code to the plain surface it ceases to be a non-substantial symbol of accomplishing a definite program. Throbber becomes a target for observation and its stadial alteration, i.e. mutation, may be explored, therefore the process is becoming a happening and being narrative in nature.

Mutagenic conjunction of digital with material and disbanding in a diversity of these diametrical modernity constructions – that is the main Arabidze’s research subject. The artist shifts focus from loading to its step-by-step operation, creating “hallucination” of activity as a result.

Impossible desire of the viewer to see something certain and apparent behind the iconic image reveals a problem of a digital era man's perception, which means that visual function is no longer an important cognitive tool, but the tool of perception, that is in its turn leads the observer to the world of hallucination.

Visual disorientation reached its height in a 3D-variation. Sculptural objects from the series Mutation #404 embody hallucination of the viewer, appearing from the sense of texture and physical form. Innhomogeneous surface of represented works seems like natural organic growth, resulted from mutation, not by artificial means. The feeling of some flexibility causes quite certain associations - capacity of materia for mutation, but is it actually true?

Ekaterina Novokshonova.


Zurab Arabidze was born in 1980 in Tbilisi (Georgia).
1997-2002 - Georgian State Technical University. Master's degree in architecture and design.
Lives and works in Moscow since 2005.

Selected solo exhibitions:
2016 - "F 63.9". DimitriShevardnadze
National Gallery, Tbilisi
2012 - Silentium. Design Factory FLACON, Moscow
2012 - Architecture + Fashion + Art = 3D project", Tbilisi
2009 - Personal paradigm, Center of contemporary art Winzavod, Gallery Fotoloft, Moscow
1999 - Parallel connection, Georgian State Technical University, Tbilisi
1995 - Window in city, Georgian National Youth Palace, Tbilisi

Selected group exhibitions:
2016 - Night at the Sea. Special project within the framework of Night of Museum 2016, The Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val, Moscow
2015 - Batumi Grafikart festival, Center for contemporary art "CAC 41N/ 41E", Batumi
2012 - ALUMINIUM, International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Baku
2011 - Contemporary art of Georgia, Caravan Gallery, Paris

Auctions:
2016 – Christie’s. Contemporary art auction “Off White”, within International Art Fair Cosmoscow, Moscow