URBAN ALLUSIONS by Katrine Levin, founder Katrine Levin Galleries
Showcasing Dideba’s mastery of both figurative and abstract, Urban Allusions is a celebration of human creativity and the enduring power of knowledge. The exhibition begins with Prometheus stealing the fire of knowledge from the Gods on Mount Olympus. Shared with humans, the knowledge lights the way to the ever expanding creation of great civilisations. Dideba’s abstract paintings take you to magical cities built of an ingenious interplay of light and colour, imperceptibly changing tones, and evocative shapes. There, the colours of day and night appear together, symbolising the ongoing cycle of creation and renewal. Inspired in part by the magical realism of Italo Calvino, these fantastical cities are fragments of ourselves reflected back at us, perceived through our own individual lens of past memories and future aspirations. Inspired by the Old Masters, Dideba’s figurative paintings present the cities’ quirky inhabitants who seem to exist outside of time. They too are aspects of humanity and ourselves, who in the trial and error of creation at various times feel like a Prometheus, a Harlequin, or a Triumphant.
The Urban Allusions journey is a beautiful reminder that cities are more than a conglomeration of people and buildings, they are spaces where our shared values, dreams, and hopes converge. Running through 14 September 2024, the exhibition marks Dideba’s first return to London after his critically acclaimed solo exhibition with us in 2019. Dideba paints in the Renaissance imprimatura technique that requires enormous skill and patience. He is a ! ectionately dubbed Georgia’s Brueghel because of his deviation from realistic proportions and interest in human behaviour. His art is a unique expression of the wonder and the often surreal and warm philosophical outlook that is quintessential of the wondrous country of Georgia where he lives and works. Born in 1968 in Tbilisi, Georgia, Dideba is widely exhibited and collected in Georgia and internationally.
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