Georgia Mahingauri Figs

Concept

MARIA ALEXEEVA,
art critic, journalist

“Artist, the way I understand this concept, is a Man of Creation, of metaphysics. Someone who works on subconscious images and prototypes. The artist is, like Don Quixote, in everlasting fight with the surrounding and inner world. He burns inside. This is a person who suffers, reflects, appreciates the freedom; it is a philosopher, a wizard, a demon, an angel, an ephemeral creature” (Irina Asaeva, interview). If an artist distinguishes his mission this way (even if a little bit romanticized), he or she, undoubtedly, sets the bar high and searches his own, unique creative path.
The artworks of Irina Asaeva is a search. The search of the answers on eternal questions – the most laconic answers that stay in our memory like axioms. Irina creates her paintings by not just intuition, but she bases it on the systems of letter-coloured codes (which had been formed quite a long time ago). She uses them to encipher the whole messages in her paintings. We used to observe the works of the surrealists and the conceptualists where the figurative image goes side-by-side the text (beginning with the painting “The Treachery of Images” by René Magritte that is more famous as "This is not a pipe" ("Ceci n'est pas une pipe”), 1928 - 1929). In Irina Asaeva’s works there is no visual text, therefore a spectator has to “travel” through the several levels and layers to the essence of the painting.
The first layer is, obviously, the painting itself with its stylistically adjusted and decorative fascination. Such painting is perfect for admiration and examination of the details and stocks of a paint-brush, so one can find the consonance of the coloured melody in soul and mood.