Ninka Skhiereli

23.05. - 20.07.2025

E.Tatishvili st.9, Tbilisi, Georgia

The Ray of the Transcendental and Postmodern Baroque - Ninka Skhiereli

Text by Gia Edzgveradze

In today’s reality — where the visual space is overloaded with an endless manifestation of signs, and where every primal, nascent creative impulse is instantly uploaded to the digital space (IG art) and becomes accessible to the public— the concept of the “mature artist” which Arthur Danto promoted on the New York art scene in the 1970s and 80s asthe defining marker of quality in art, now seems awkward and out of time. To be transparent: the synthesis of experience and fundamental reflection, as a guarantee of the highest quality in art —something typically achieved in the midlife of an artist—is no longer considered a value in our age, which is accustomed to chaos and restlessness.

The contemporary art world, with its dynamic social media platforms and the rapidly shifting criteria of institutional structures, often favors intuitive-emotional creative expressions over cultivated, conscious subversions andexperiments. The free unleashing of intuitive expression in young art, valued for its naturalness and immediacy, is not just a fashionable trend — it marks a profound change in how and with what philosophical tools we evaluate art today.

Now, even the doors of recognition are open to the art of late teenagers. This trust in early-age creative intuition alignswith postmodern discourses, psychoanalysis, and semiotics, which see spontaneous, fragmented, and emotionally/intellectually unprocessed material as crucial to analysis. From this perspective, young art is not merely aform that has yet to reach full maturity — it is perceived by contemporary thinking as a living psychic text, where essence is formed through the rupture (of culture), gesture (of the social), and dream (of what lies beyond the given).

And yet, amid the accelerated trend of harvesting expressive and analytic material, a voice occasionally emerges — so clear, so internally processed — that it transcends all age-related criteria. That is, it brings forth a product of such spiritual and formal fullness that it completely satisfies the sense of creative fulfillment.

Such is the phenomenon of the work of young Georgian artist Ninka Skhiereli, whose artwork I came across by chance on social media. What I saw in her work was not an outburst of chaotic-instinctual forces — it was a vision. Her color palette and light were so unusual that they reflected in my consciousness as the transcendental quality of a sunbeam — this, of course, immediately drew my attention. The feeling reminded me of the atmospheric glow in PierreBonnard’s paintings, but here the glow was filled with an entirely new kind of charm: the spiritual warmth and brilliance of openness — as invitation or welcome.

This transcendentality lacked the cold, metaphysical grandeur depicted in philosophical and religious literature — it was more medieval: a vision of spiritual light that hosts, warms, and does not frighten with the neutrality of its mystery. On the contrary, in these paintings, transcendence was represented as the language of spiritual hospitality. Her works did not merely depict—they invited the viewer to cohabit a metaphysical space.

With all the power of my inspiration, I tried to convince this artist that her work had great potential. And, as happens with those “born to be artists,” Ninka did not hesitate — she immediately began, with great concentration, to research her own creative capacities and analyze their connection with the cultural world. In short — she instantly and fully dedicated herself to the whirlwind of creation.

Success did not delay. Within a year, a leading Georgian gallery began collaborating with her; a well-known Germangallery hosted her solo show in Cologne; and now, a respected New York gallery is in ongoing talks about future cooperation. In my view, this rapid progress is not only a result of her artistic talent — it is a testament to the artist’s “karmic readiness”, when a phenomenon emerges — something exceedingly rare in the territory of creation. Ninka’s rare creative maturity is evidenced by the rare alignment between the inner necessity of her artistic language and the messages it brings forth.

Her figurative works are particularly striking, where human forms attempt to break through their boundaries and transform into amorphous energetic flows — psychic tornadoes, whose spiritual rebellion and yearning to be liberated from determined form cannot be contained. These figures are in constant frictional struggle with their contours — aninevitable urge toward boundarylessness clashes with the will to preserve their form. These works are psychological landscapes where the individual strives for transcendence and seeks a non-dichotomous connection with the world in unconditional vulnerability. This intensity reveals the emotional depth with which Ninka approaches the human condition and its potential within the cosmos.

Her abstract, landscape-inspired canvases do not merely depict — they act. Here, postmodern baroque reveals the fluidity and dynamic of multiverse — every visual layer in the image appears as a flowing, energetic field, each exerting continuous, dynamic influence on the others in a thirst for interconnectedness. Gilles Deleuze called suchunity “disjunctive unity”—the primary icon of postmodern baroque — where sovereign, discordant, and incompatible segments vibrate together to reveal the grandeur of unified being. The surfaces of these psychic landscapes are covered with the explosive substance of the artist’s subjectivity. These explosions shatter the boundaries of our internalized mental content and seek escape! The ultimate goal here is the dissolution into freedom of the comprehended psychic segments composing the world.

At the same time, Ninka Skhiereli is not defined only by intuitive expressiveness. Her work also incorporates symbolic imagery: portraits charged with high psychological intensity and reflective of the spiritual history of humanity.Surrounding these portraits—within landscapes or interiors—are signs that emerge from the unconscious, as wellas elements charged with meaning: symbols of flight, obstruction, routine, and its disruption. In such series, a consciousness focused on the fragile yet always dramatic core of the human being functions within a multilayered psychic and cosmic field. These paintings do not offer solutions to the revealed problems of human coexistence — they offer psychological truth: the human shown in tension, in desire, in longing, and also… as the victim of these drives. The human here is at once sovereign and startled, shaken.

The appearance of Ninka Skhiereli — and more broadly, of her generation of artists—represents a turning point not only for Georgian art but for contemporary Georgian culture and society as a whole.The ability of Ninka and her generation’s artists to merge intuition with intellectual aims and to place this amalgam under a great question mark puts these young creators at the forefront of a phenomenon that returns a lost soul to art—an act of cultural transcendence, an attempt to reach beyond. This is a step toward ensuring that Georgia is no longer merely a mimic of Western culture and civilization — but a co-creator of it.