Romantic German Painter From Sayatnova Street

Contemporary Art Mixed by Hans Heiner Buhr

Sayatnova Street is one of the smallest streets in Old Sololaki district, where among the sinuous and extremely narrow streets you won’t be able to find Sayatnova easily or maybe never find. That’s the place where Hans Heiner Buhr lives. Very old wooden stairs go up to the house and a studio where the painter works. Hans Heiner Buhr is a painter. But this one word seems not enough to express all the diversity neither of his art nor his whole activities he is fond of doing.
The first Painting he shows is “Mother of Georgia” from his earlier works. He laughs a lot when remembers the first reaction of the Georgian who saw it on the exhibit. He shows me the real “Mother of Georgia” from the window of the studio “Are they alike?” he asks. It’s impossible to keep off laughing. Actually the painting shows an old woman sitting in the chair and two beardy men with guns are standing on the background of her. Their faces are stern, ruthless and they look like robbers. It is exactly what the painter wanted to express. It was Georgia perceived from his eye – eyes of a German man who came from Europe and find out a world of his childhood dreams. “All my childhood I played in robbery and pretended to be a thief or robber who lives wildly in the mountains and my dreams almost came true, I’d never imagine it,” remembers Buhr his first impressions about Georgia that actually last long, until this days.

“In 1996 I got a job as a German language teacher abroad. When people from the office asked me where I wanted to go I said South America. After some time they found me a workplace in Rustavi, Georgia. Of cause I’d heard about Georgia. I’m from East Germany, from East Berlin and I’ve studied eastern art and Russian language. I had some Russian friends and they used to talk much about Georgia and its beauty. When they heard about a chance I had, they advised not to miss the chance to explore a nice country and an opportunity to paint beautiful pictures,” Hans remembers. He arrived in Rustavi and probably astonished. He opened a completely bizarre country that he has never seen or heard.
Besides the extreme poverty, he saw a very strange, completely different transformation process of Georgia from socialism to capitalism apart different from the same transformation his home part of Germany, eastern Germany had been passing. “You had nobody, to advice what to do, Georgians had to learn themselves, I remember that time when Georgian women began their business, opened shops in Rustavi, when man used to spend time playing cards. Women were responsible on the family.” His “Mother of Georgia,” was an echo for that period when robbery and killing people had been considered as an ordinary thing in Georgia.

After seeing all this troubles and horrors in Georgia and still didn’t fled from the country, is makes clear how the romantic German painter felt in love with poor and dangerous but beautiful Georgia.
He stayed three years in Rustavi, using that period in traveling all over the country. Especially he was impressed with the mountains of east Georgia. Then he got married and has been living here about 13 years already having Georgian wife and three children, talking Georgian and German but looking like Germans. Now he is 43, tall and blond having greenish-bluish eyes and strong German accent.
“I stayed here and didn’t know what to do. I wanted to promote myself as an artist, because I was completely apart from Berlin and galleries, cultural life and I didn’t know what was going on there. Then I came across to blogs and I understood that it was a great thing to promote my art. I realized that blog was better than just web-site, and launched my blog.”
He is very fond of internet. He does most of his works using internet and is a great promoter of it.
“Internet is a kind of medium bringing together all Caucasian artists. Caucasus and Georgia had no lobby for a long time, nobody was interested in this country, but there are really good artists here, and foreign artist got interested what’s going on here, in Caucasian phenomena, its romantic character. There came an idea to create art club Caucasus, where we have gathered different artists from all over the world, including Georgian artists living abroad. That is not just only bringing them together but promotes them, we have their works on the site and viewer can see and buy them or contact with authors,“ Buhr says. The blog artclubcaucasus.blogspot.com is the place of one big gathering of the artists from Caucasus and people fond of the region with different styles, tastes and ways of expression.
The style of Hans Buhr is very eclectic, mix of painting, textile, photos, Photoshop and some more things and he merges them together with different techniques and methods. The style changes a lot. The latest idea he is obsesses is doing photo collages using silver paper as a background of the picture.
“Only problem that I faced was that my creations were only in computer and not in the paper, but I have found a way out of it, I found a special material, it is cheap and even if something pours on it, it doesn’t spoils and you can easily wash it. And people who like the picture can buy it, not just having in computer,” he even uses to paint with brush on the surface of the ready collage and create some different image of the picture.
Neighbor’s ordinary luxurious Mercedes treated in photoshop looks completely different and even it is hard to guess where the photo ends and painting begins, but there is no painting at all and that’s the whole charm of his works. They are very contemporary, very close to the reality but wrapped in a very romantic cover. Tin Solders are his other fascination. Black and Golden old soviet soldiers look very modern but giving the remembrance of old times as well.
In spite of his good skills in promotion, business, management and scheduling are words he doesn’t like. He performs his love to the traveling into a small business plus pleasure and enjoys it every summer. “I always try to take small groups to travel, because I don’t want to have real big business and I want to keep beauty in my business. Don’t want to become a manager and to sit on a table and write emails and manage the guests arrival. I can get more money to put 20 Americans in one big buss and bring them to kakheti and other places, but tourists and me, we are all much more satisfied when the group consists of two or three people, maximum 6.” His guests are mostly German, Austrian and Swiss tourists and the way he they connect with each other is again his invariable friend and partner – internet.
Hans has a good collection of paintings, Dutch and modern Georgian artists, who are his friends as well and is proud of his collection, the collection also consists of photos Stalin and big variety of maps exposed in the studio. His owns exposition intends to hold in October. Buhr has an amazing idea of the exhibit, but let live it as a surprise for the amateurs of the modern art.
Anna Chichinadze
http://www.georgiatoday.ge/article_details.php?id=6639&cat=Culture&version=455

Michael Kenna in Tbilisi

Photography Exhibit Brings Originality to Landscapes
The atmosphere is mystic and calm. Trees are rustling quietly, and the seas are soft. Total silence is the main spirit in Michael Kenna’s landscapes. They that are all black and white, and taken mostly after midnight.
Michael Kenna, a world-acclaimed British photographer, visited Tbilisi last week to open his first exhibit in Georgia. The name of the exhibit is “French Landscapes,” and all the photos are taken in France – Kenna’s favorite country to work.
Kenna, born in Ireland, finds his only interest in landscapes, and photographs them all around the world. He said that he was greatly impressed with France 30 years ago, and since that time he photographs it more frequently than any other place in the world. That said, he still travels much and has worked in many countries, such as Japan, India, Thailand, Vietnam, USA, and Canada.
“Last time, I was interested in Japan, particularly its North Part. I’ve worked there in winter and everything around is white, it’s very impressive. Looks like England and I love it,” says Kenna. He never visits a country once; his style of working is to return back in the same place and discover new things and new angles to shoot.
The project has been organized by the Tbilisi House of Photography, in partnership with The Georgian National Museum and the Alexander Dumas French Culture Centre.

“I’m very happy that the National Museum helped us to promote this event. Photography is one of the most popular fields in art, which gathers together the biggest public. During the last ten years it became more worldwide and sometimes this period is known as a photo explosion,” said Nestan Nizharadze, the Head of Tbilisi Photography House. Before the opening of the exhibit, she took Kenna and his French agent to the Kazbegi mountains, and the photographer said he was impressed by the landscapes and he would be glad to come back and work on Georgian mountain prints more carefully. The most important feature in his personality is that he mostly works in the dark, after midnight, and spends around eight hours setting the composition for one shooting.
“People always ask, how can I do it, to wait eight hours until the particular shadows or lights appear in the nature, but I think it is a luxury for me, in this time I look at the sky, at stars, I feel the atmosphere and I’m really very happy of it,” Kenna said.
He also said, “though sometimes I try to make some experiment and photograph models, my main interest is landscapes, and I’m never bored of it. Everything in the world has already been photographed, but the art is to find something new in everything already known, and I try to do it.” He tries it, and the result is in front of us. The prints are very close to the painting, every detail is accounted, and even the smallest shade has been shot only because the artist decided it was worthy to have. The viewer can feel that everything, all the nature, is under the author’s control. You feel that the only human being around is the photographer himself, the only person awake in the middle of the night, between the minutes of the dark and the sunrise.
Guram Tsibakhashvili, famous Georgian photographer and one of the initiators of the exhibition, said, “He is a very interesting photographer. That is the main reason we chose him for the exhibit. Not many photographers are left working in the classic style. His photos are like meditation, actually he meditates. He works about eight hours on shooting a single photo, and it means he is meditating. I hope that he’ll take photos in Georgia and his collections will be enriched with Georgian landscapes.”
The exhibit was held in Tbilisi Karvasla Museum and attended by lots of people. It was not easy to reach the photos and to look at them in the time you need to observe. That’s why interior designer Guga Kotetishvili said, “I liked the exhibit very much, and I want to come again, to view the photos more carefully. The Photographer is very professional, so I’m very glad to be here.”
One of the photos paid homage to Henry Cartie-Bresson, prominent Photographer of the early 20th century. Kenna feels him as his own teacher. “Of cause he is absolute master, I’m absolutely impressed, it’s impossible not to be. He is a phenomenal artist. I often look at different masters’ works and I take some ideas for myself. I’ve found many interesting things in his photos; I try to acknowledge them. That is why I wrote a homage to HCB. Cartie-Bresson is fantastic,” says Kenna.
Prints presented on the exhibit belonged to different periods of the artist’s works. Some of them were from eighties, and the newest pieces were taken in 2007.
“He is great, this man knows all the methods of how to take good landscape photos. He keeps attention on geometric objects, he is very careful observing and using air, lights and the maximum possible details of the landscape where he works. Yes, I love these landscapes, and I’m delighted,” said Aleksandre Bagration-Davidoff, a young photographer.
Kenna, who had been giving signatures and talking with Georgians, said he didn’t expect the warm emotions he has received from the Georgian people.
Over the next days of the exhibit, he will travel in the Black Sea coast and shoot experimental photos there, to see then and come back again.
The day before the exhibit in the Karvasla museum, he held a workshop in the Georgian National Museum hall. He showed about 150 prints to the auditorium and talked about his techniques and stories about some particular photos.
Michael Kenna is the author of about 30 books. Most of them are thematically arranged. He is the author of books about Japan, power stations, steel works, and all kinds of landscapes, beginning with the pastoral and rural landscapes.
“I have a whole book about my daughter’s kindergarten,” he said.
Kenna has been exhibited in almost every famous museum and gallery, and has about seven exhibits a month all around the world. The French Landscapes will be presented in the Karvasla Museum until December 20.
Anna Chichinadze
5.12.2008
http://www.museum.ge/web_page/dijest.php?id=82

New Batik Creations from Katie Nikolaishvili

Intense colors of purple, red, blue and lilac, in natural silk tissues, combine almost all the colors of the palette, in a technique that seems as though the canvas has been applied to, with many little accents of tissues and accessories. This mirage is the result of refined taste and individual technique of the artist; Katie Nikolaishvili.
Landscapes, different compositions, flowers and even portraits created with the technique of batik, were exhibited in Shardeni Street Gallery “Baia”, last weekend. It was twenty-four year old, Katie Nikolaishvili’s second personal exhibition. “I’ve taken part in many group exhibitions, the last time it was in Germany some months ago, but I try to hold personal ones annually as well,” says young artist. Slim and tiny, she seemed happy and a little bit nervous at the opening of her exhibit. Her crisp appearance, a white blouse and a kind of unique creation, makes one imagine how accurately, and with attention she has worked on the tissues. “I do outline spontaneously, I never know ahead what will come out from it, but then when the graphical picture is ready I work on colors and it takes a lot of time,” Katie says. She graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Art and has a diploma in Textile Design. She has worked on Gobelin as well, but as of late she prefers Batik on silk.
She never knows how long one creation will take before its ready. Most of her time is spent working on processing the tissue and the paints on it. “When I make things like scarves or cushion covers or other things that need to be washed, I try hard to make them water resist, but decorative works doesn’t need so much trouble,” the artist explains. Not because of less trouble, but because she felt so, Katie decided to create just decorative batik pictures for this year’s exhibit.
The forty-two textiles have not one creative line or common theme. The painter created them throughout the year, randomly, and not specially for that event. That is why all the works are different, and every piece of textile needs its own special attention and observation. If you look closely enough, you can find some themes in the pieces Katie has worked on during the year. One of them; compositions made of tea-pots and glasses for tea. Their colors and ornaments are like old fashioned, traditional Russian kettles. Impressive yellow, light-red and light-brown colors evoke the feeling of old kitchen, sitting around a table, having a tea and delicious biscuits. There are also a line of flowers on the pots and landscapes. The well-known Georgian painter and cartoonist, Zaal Sulakauri, who also attended the opening, has been enchanted with the landscapes. He even thought to try Batik himself, a technique he hadn’t used yet. “I’ve never worked in Batik but after seeing these pictures, I really think of it now. I especially liked some of them because, I feel an inspiration from my favorite artist, Gustav Klimt, and that’s fine. Also I like the compositions of the picture, they show that the author is professional painter and good at her work,” Sulakauri said. He even proposed Nikolaishvili’s future cooperation, and asked if she would be interested in teaching batik for children in the art-studio, which he owns. It appeared teaching was in Katie’s interests as well.

Anna Chichinadze
3.04.2009

MY Article About Dito Saralidze, Yoga and some more

Yoga Classes by Sri Chinmoy Follower

Jharna-kala, in one of Tbilisi’s narrow and old streets is a place where everyone can visit and get some more about yoga philosophy or just relax and talk to the owner Dito Saralidze.
Jharna-kala in Bengali means “fountain-art” and it is the name that Sri Chinmoy Indian Spiritual teacher and philosopher gave to his artwork. “The name Jharna-kala reflects the spontaneous fountain of creativity he experienced through meditation, expressed and revealed through an extraordinary output of paintings in a wide array of media and forms,” is written in the Chinmoy web-site. Dito Saralidze 31, is the follower of the man that had many other occupations and talents during his lifetime.
Sri Chinmoy born in 1931 in East Bengal, now Bangladesh, became a well-known spiritual teacher all around the world. According to his followers Sri Chinmoy wrote 1,500 books, 115, 000 poems and 20, 000 songs, crafted 200, 000 paintings and gave almost 800 peace concerts. During the concert he usually played 10-15 different instruments, though people say he could play up to 150 musical instruments. “And all that was the merit of his spiritual life, no one without great power of heart and soul can do the same,” says Dito about his master. The Chinmoy theory, about the heart power, is the theory which first intrigued Dito and encouraged him to spread the heart yoga theory among the people generally interesting with yoga.
“The power of a human being is in his soul and the place of the soul in a human heart, that’s why the power of heart is greater than the power of mind. All the possibilities we have, are thanks to the soul and mind and cleaning and stimulating the soul helps us to do everything we want, as Sri Chinmoy did fantastic things during his lifetime that at one sight is impossible for one man to do,” told Saralidze to the people who gathered at his place, what he calls Jharna-kala and is the room where twice a week he opens a door for everyone who wants to learn more about yoga. The walls are covered with paintings from Sri Chinmoy most of them are birds, as the master used to paint birds as a symbol of freedom. The room is in white, and the floor covered with carpets. Candle is lightning and the music performed by Sri Chinmoy is on.
The music was the first reason that Dito met with his future master. He attended the concert that Chinmoy held in January 2007 in Varna, Bulgaria and Dito being in a stressed state of soul decided to go there. For that time he knew nothing about that man. His Ukrainian friend whom he called in that tough period of life advised him to go in Chinmoy concert together and they went. “After the concert I felt unspeakable, indescribable, I felt my body easier than feathering and I don’t remember how I appeared in my hotel. But then I sobered and went back to the concert hall. I wanted to meet him, but he appeared busy. I sent him letters, asked to his people to arrange me audience and at last he let me in. We talked a lot, he explained me his meditation and so I became his follower,” remembers Dito that period of time. Soon they met in Saint-Petersburg, Russia and the new follower studied much about meditation from his master.
Before Saralidze met Sri Chinmoy he was fond of Yoga for seven years or more. “I loved to read Greek philosophers, but once I found a book of a Polish author about yoga and I was addicted to it. I began to search for yoga books and I bought enormous amount of them. At the same time I tried to find a master but there was no one in Tbilisi at that time, it was around 2000. Later an Indian master arrived in Tbilisi and he taught me Hatha yoga. When he left, I went on practicing it on my own,” says Dito. In 2005, he took a part in a reality-show “Geo Bar,” and lived about three months rounded up with cameras. He couldn’t meditate there. He didn’t win and when he tried to return back to his old life faced terrible stresses and disorders in him. Even Hatha yoga didn’t help him. That was the time when Sri Chinmoy came in his life.
“What I like in Chinmoy is that he dismisses all kind of body activities to reach the highness of your soul. It is not mind, but soul concentrated and, as the soul is everything in human being so the energy comes from heart to mind and not contrary. With the meditation of Chinmoy way, sitting putting hands together and silencing your soul and your mind is getting calmer and when the heart and mind are calmed down, then the furtive talents can come out from your inner world and you can do the best things in the world,” says Dito, sitting in the same order he explained.
Principles of meditation, he explains, are very simple. Silence and concentration on positive things a nice garden, rainbow and beautiful flowers, to imagine in your heart and visualization — are the main tips he gives to the people gathered in his room. Later one can do it at home in an appropriate place for meditation or everyone can come again and again at his place always welcome to get guests. “It’s my second time here but I can feel nothing important for now, I have serious stresses in my life and I will go on practicing here,” says forty-three year old Marina Mkhitariani. Another man Soso Phavlenishvili, appeared to search phenomenon in him, he wishes to reach perfection.
After discovering the new method of mediation, Dito says he found himself calmer and happier than ever. Sri Chinmoy died in October 2007, a month before Dito and his friends planned to hold his concert in Tbilisi. Later he made an exhibition of Chinmoys paintings and a year later he arranged a screening of his master’s some of the best concerts in Film House.
http://georgiatoday.ge/article_details.php?id=6384&cat=Culture&version=448
Anna Chichinadze
27.02.2009

A Newspaper Worth to Read

http://georgiatoday.ge/

My article about Ralph Haelbig

Caucasian Blogspot by German Ralph Halbig

Georgien.blogspot.com is the place where artists – musicians, painters, photographers gather and are able to share and discover eachothers work.
The artists don’t gather here randomly, all of them are Caucasians. The only foreigner here is the creator and author of the Blog,German Ralph Hдlbig, mostly known as just Rapho – a nick name that his Georgian friends gave him, adding to his real name a bit Caucasian dialect.
His story of achievment in the Caucasus began in the late 80’s. Once when climbing near his hometown Dresden, friends told him about the Caucasian Mountains. From that time he started to research the region. Everything begins with an amazing love-story in Berlin,but also with many harships in the relationship with his Georgian love. “We discovered the differences in our own mentality and traditional education. We had conflicts in our young life. And these differences are nevertheless very interesting for me. The caucasian culture is for me a private contact with my deeper mirror image of myself. In Georgia I could discover more about myself than in Germany. And besides I have learnt to respect my own roots more and my own daily culture. Now I would like to use the discrepancies of different cultural conditions for building a bridge between different cultures. I know Georgia and Armenia are very early christian cultures but the influences of the persian and asian cultures are more present than in Europe. Therefore we have to understand and learn more about each other. This abstract idea was the main-subject to open my blog five years ago,” remembers Ralph his first steps as a blogger for Caucasus.
First he asked friends for contacts, for links of different interesting sites to pubish on his blog and then connections and relations came step by step, in this regard, Ralph’s communicative character played it’s biggest role. “I got in touch with more and more people all over the world in the internet the most with Caucasian roots. In the virtual world I am well-known. I am very glad about the many caucasian and foreign people in the world who have been writing me and thanking me for my collections of news and caucasian stuff in my blog. Five years ago there was a small blog community in the Caucasus. Mostly by foreigners. Now the situation has changed and I hope more young people are interested in building a serious community. Not only in the internet and in networking. I hope the young generation can find a real development of their own culture,” says Ralph.
Among others, Ralph’s favorite hobby is photography. His Blog permanetly broadcasts collections of different Caucasian Photographers. The recent session belongs to Natalia Mali, A photographer from Dagestan Republic. His own photo sessions are all about Caucasus and one of his future plansis to hold an exhibit together with South Caucasian photographers,the topic is of course Caucasus. Another important segment on his blog is Georgian music. “My first serious contact with the georgian folk music was the documentary of my friend Ruth Olshan. Her film “Like Air To Breath” about the georgian music and dance was very impressive for me. This film completed my thinking about Georgian culture. Suddenly I felt the timeless energy and the strange emotions of the Georgian culture. I learned through experience also during my travels together with Tutarchela, what is the deeper sense of the caucasian mentality. In contrast to european culture I could relive an important ground of human being. The music, the dance and sometimes also the supra can bring different people realy together. But for the very typical europeans, that c an be ery difficult to understand,” explaines Hдlbig. “And I haven’t realy a favorite Georgian song. It depends on my mood. Last summer there was an impressive funeral song from Tamar Buadze (Tutarchela on the Tour) in Europe dedicated tomurdered people in the war. Now I often listen to the song “Kvira” by Sopho Aslanishvili. And one of my favourite singers are Hamlet Gonashvili.”
Being fond of Georgian and South Caucasian culture, besides blog activities, Hдlbig does most from internet as well. He has organized many small-budget events together with Georgiansin Germany. “I tried to popuarlizethe culture of Caucasus in Germany. With the aid of the Geothe-Institut and the State Department of Germany could we organize concerts in Europe for the Female Singer Chor Tutarchela from Rustavi. Four years ago I organised a georgian week “Kartuli Suli” together with my friend Knut GeiЯler in Leipzig with support of different cultural foundations in Saxonia. Different artists only from Georgia could come to the small Theatre Festival “OFF Europa” in Leipzig. And last year I invited in the same Festival the curator Nini Palavandishvili. We organized short-dated together with young artists from Georgia and the support from rusiko Oats New Art Gallery a non-budget exhibition with the works of georgian artists in two galleries in Leipzig.”
Ralph’s future plans are many and diversive but traditionally connected to Georgian and South Caucasus. “I want to present our artifical documantary about the archaeological travel from Jцrg Herold in all three South Caucasian countries. Now exhibitions about this project run in Berlin in the gallery Eigen+Art. And also I want to start some film projects with the SchmidtFilm Production from Leipzig. Friends from the EuroKauKasia Society would like to support the history of Germans living in Caucasian area like Bolnisi.”
Ralph thinks about travel development in the region. He plans to launch travel tours for Europeansinterested in folk music traditions of Georgia. “My dream is to find a company for all such activities,” he says. At last he makes a big anouncement, that Blog needs activists — “I am looking for support for my blog. Maybe some Georgians, Armenians and aAzerbaijanians from younger or older generation like to publish their intependent articles, photos, reports, posts, potcasts, videos and much more in my blog. It is easy to do it.”
Ralph is enormously optimistic. Maybe the book he has decided to write will see the day light soon. He puts all his knowledge and experience about Georgian and South Caucasus in it and writes with the great love forthis region, that is most significant for his life and maybe meaningful for Caucasus.

http://www.georgiatoday.ge/article_details.php?id=6424&cat=Culture&version=449

my welcoming note

Hello Guests,

I'm Anna Chichinadze, I write a lot in English, they are mainly articles for the English-language nespaper "Georgia Today." I want to show you some of my works. Let us see you like them or not. Please, share your point of view, they're very useful for me. Every idea are welcomed here.
My special thanks to Hans Heiner Buhr, who convinced me to have my own blog.

sincerely yours,

Anna aka Anni Chichinadze