Rusudan Khizanishvili – Double Exposure

As hundreds of thousands take to the streets in Georgia to demand democratic rights, political self-determination, and a European future, KORNFELD Galerie Berlin presents Double Exposure, an exhibition of new works by Georgian artist Rusudan Khizanishvili. At a moment of heightened political urgency, the exhibition brings renewed resonance to a practice that has long explored the tensions between personal memory, cultural identity, and lived political reality.

Curated by Asja Wolf, Double Exposure operates both as metaphor and method. The title evokes the simultaneous visibility of multiple realities while referencing the photographic and cinematic technique of layering images. In Khizanishvili’s paintings, this principle unfolds as a complex visual structure: translucent figures, shifting contours, and stratified colour fields allow different temporalities, spaces, and emotional registers to coexist within a single pictorial plane. Past and present, myth and political reality, individual biography and collective history intersect without resolving into a singular narrative.

Khizanishvili’s background in painting and film informs a distinctly cinematic approach to image-making. Her compositions unfold like scenes; figures appear as protagonists; perspectives evoke the framing of a camera lens. The logic of double exposure – traditionally a technical process of superimposing images – is translated into painterly terms, resulting in dense compositions of overlapping lines, planes, and chromatic atmospheres. Bodies, faces, and symbols emerge as if briefly illuminated within an inner projection, suspended between presence and disappearance.

At the same time, Double Exposure is grounded in the artist’s sustained international trajectory. The works presented in Berlin were created against the backdrop of a social and political climate in which questions of freedom, belonging, and cultural identity are once again being negotiated with urgency in Georgia. Khizanishvili does not respond through direct political iconography; instead, she develops a visual language in which personal memory, mythology, and collective experience are interwoven, offering a nuanced, multilayered reflection on the conditions of the present.

Rusudan Khizanishvili (*1979) lives and works in Tbilisi. She studied at the J. Nikoladze Art School and at the State Academy of Arts in Tbilisi. Her works have been shown internationally, including in 2015 as part of the 56th Venice Biennale. Today, she is regarded as one of the most important artists of her generation in Georgia. Her work is exhibited worldwide and is held in major public and private collections, including the Mark Rothko Art Centre, Daugavpils (Latvia), the Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi (Georgia), Oni Local Museum, Oni (Georgia), the Kvareli Foundation, Kvareli (Georgia), the collections of Stefan Simchowitz, Los Angeles (USA), Sam Keller (Switzerland), Collezione Taurisano, Naples (Italy), Ettore Rossetta (Italy), the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Australia, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), the art collection of the Korean Embassy, Berlin (Germany), as well as the Breus Foundation, Moscow (Russia). This presence underscores the international reach and ongoing relevance of her work.

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