Vajiko Chachkhiani
Both
7th Rubens Promotional Award of the City of Siegen
October 26, 2014–February 8, 2015
Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen
Unteres Schloss 1
57072 Siegen
Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11–18h,
Thursday 11–20h
T +0271 405 77 0
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info [at] mgk-siegen.de
On October 26, Chachkhiani received the City of Siegen’s 7th Rubens Promotional Award in the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen. Previous laureates have been Karin Sander, Peter Piller and Diango Hernández among others. This prize, which was established in 1980, is awarded quinquennialy, always two and a half years after the Rubens Award. The exhibition Both opened in conjunction with the award celebration.
Vajiko Chachkhiani’s art touches upon life’s existential questions. A concrete block with cut off hair as the leftovers of a performance, an oppressively overheated room with high humidity, charred trees as witnesses of the war that raged in his home country of Georgia—his sculptures, installations, and performances raise questions about human nature and the history and conflicts connected to it. Traces of human activities and changes through time are visualized emphatically using materials such as traded personal effects, wax, or water. Chachkhiani’s work is persuasive because of its incomparable interpenetration of various artistic media. The different points of view on human life emphasize life’s preciousness and affects viewers directly.
A catalog with texts by Ory Dessau, Ines Rüttinger and Rein Wolfs accompanies the exhibition.
Vajiko Chachkhiani was born in 1985 in Tbilisi, Georgia. He originally began studying mathematics and computer science before turning to art. Since 2009 he has been living in Berlin, where he studied at the Berlin University of the Arts until 2013 under Gregor Schneider.