Enamel Art Gallery “ Ornament”

Jimi Lominadze – Qvevry

Qvevry created with extraordinary mastery in cloisonné enamel art

feels like artifact arrived from the 23rd century – the work where

Georgia, wine, history and the futuristic aesthetics merge into a perfect

harmony.

Turtle

David Tskhadaia

Cloisonné enamel, silver, copper, brass, dental plaster, epoxy

40 cm x 47 cm x 35 cm

The mixed-media object is a multilayered allegory in which form, material, and symbolic

language are brought together into a unified visual-conceptual system. The figure of the turtle

is transformed into an allegory of the body of the Earth bearing the weight of humanity. Its

heavy, mosaic-like, brown shell evokes the surface of the planet. The map-like fragmentation,

green accents, and transparent blue “currents” emerge as signs of natural resources and vital

energies. Yet their sparce, diminishing distribution across the surface, together with the

dripping lines, produces an impression of leakage and depletion, as if pointing to the

irreversible collapse of the system’s limits and equilibrium.

The metal construction attached to the shell, which encloses the form of a human brain, shifts

the allegory into an anthropocentric dimension. The small objects placed on the surface of the

brain–models of churches, copper-toned coins–reads as signs of collective memory, as well as

of the institutions and systems created by humankind.

In this way, the work emerges as a critical visual commentary on the logic of capitalism. The

Earth appears not as a neutral foundation, but as a bound and exploited body. The turtle’s slow

movement, the cage-like construction, and the metal chains intensify the sense of weight and

entrapment. The object points to a condition in which the natural environment is subjected to

the pressure of human institutions, consumption, accumulation, and systems of control.

The combination of materials reinforces the concept through the object’s physical presence.

The intermingling of natural, biological surfaces with artificial, synthetic materials, together

with deliberately introduced dissonance, creates a hybrid field in which aesthetic experience

is disrupted by a sense of threat, while memory is transformed into a burden and an inescapable

responsibility.

Woman

Tea Gurgenidze

Cloisonné enamel, wood, iron

29 cm x 20 cm x 3 cm

In this work, figurative composition becomes a vehicle for the poetic representation of an inner state.

Rather than presenting an individualized portrait, the stylized female figure appears as a generalized

image.

The face is rendered as two distinct surfaces: an undivided, greenish-yellow illuminated field and a

dark, shadowed tonal zone, suggesting a state of inward concentration. The eye, as the site of the gaze

and outward projection, is here placed in shadow, while the other remains beyond the field of vision.

The dark-toned metal frame contrasts with the chromatic field it encloses, sharpening the binary

between interior and exterior. The ambivalence extends into the relationship between the figure and

the ornamented background. The soft, rounded floral ornamentation of the ground does not function

merely as decoration. Its delicate rhythm forms a lyrical field around the figure, becoming a visual

equivalent of an inner state.

The organization of the plane rests on a double principle. A geometric articulation of form operates

alongside formal continuity. Chromatic areas defined by clear contours construct the body as a

segmented, planar whole, while the angular sharpness of the form is softened by subtle gradations

between cool and warm tones. The specificity of cloisonné enamel–the material’s capacity to operate

as a dynamic optical field–becomes central to the work’s expressive character, activating its inner

dynamism. This dynamism reads as a concentrated yet sensitive and poetic visual metaphor for

silence and inwardness.