Almine Rech Gallery is pleased to present Two Projects: Tamuna Sirbiladze and Graham Collins.

These two solo projects will be on view at the Brussels gallery from January 14th to February 27th, 2016.

Tamuna Sirbiladze

Tamuna Sirbiladze is exhibiting for the second time at Almine Rech Gallery Brussels. In 2010, on the occasion of Franz West’s solo exhibition, Sirbiladze exhibited paintings in dialogue with sculptures by the Austrian artist. For this latest exhibition, Sirbiladze will present recent paintings created from 2013 to 2015.

In 2013, Sirbiladze produced paintings of blossoms, depictions that she considers as the beginning of something that is not yet fully grown. This series evolved in 2014 with paintings of flowers, created after Warhol’s polaroid self-portraits and which she calls ‘Andy’s Hair’. Her new series of paintings consist of large scale sketches that oscillate between Modernist still life works and abstract paintings.

Sirbiladze has exhibited internationally with collections and institutions such as Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2015 – 2016); Omi International Arts Center, Ghent, New York (2015); Secession, Vienna (2015); 21er haus, Vienna (2014); Saatchi Gallery, London (2012); and the François Pinault Foundation, Venice (2007).

Tamuna Sirbiladze was born in Tsibili, Georgia, and lives and work in Vienna.

Graham Collins

This new series of paintings extends Collins’ exploration of the status and context of the act of painting. In each of these paintings the conventional stretched canvas is supplanted by plastic casts of an array of objects – screwdrivers, cabinets, umbrellas, packages of underwear – that belie any unifying association. The mystery of their inclusion, these ghosts of paraphernalia, challenges the priority and prestige usually afforded to the painterly act. But painting is present here too, qualified in a novel manner that compels it to vie for prominence with its supportive stuff. The burnt sienna and green paint casually echo the tropes of abstract expressionism, but stop short of totemic definitude. It is a case of soil versus flower.

The sculptures in this exhibition explore similar themes by different means. Improbably upright, bronze casts of tortilla chips, toothbrushes, hairbands – so much lacey jetsam, strewn upward – the sculptures defy any dimensional imperative, elegant elaborations of that early instinct to pile and to prove our power to raise.

Graham Collins was born in Washington, D.C. in 1980. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.