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The Soul of Georgia by Janis Pipars
Leonardo da Vinci never made it to Georgia. But the “Last Supper”, the prototype of every scene that depicts the communication between body and soul is found here nonetheless. Not once but dozens of times. Beneath the gnarled trees of this Caucasian land and in its dark and gloomy farmsteads. The plastic tablecloths of the postmodern age, which tell of the power of metamorphosis and of the new face of the old table, may underlie the related triptych, but not cover it up. Georgia: wine and soul – that could well be the title. And: Georgia, the country of the grand gesture, behind which an even grander generosity is hidden, and of covered tables of archaic power. Janis Pipars has repeatedly been reminded of Leonardo’s “Last Supper”. Not that he set out explicitly with that in mind. Rather one could rightly say: along the way it was Georgia itself, directly, sometimes in rubber boots, on the dance floor and, in any case, from person to person, from host to guest of honour, from the grey of the periphery straight into the heart. The keywords were always: an inspired landscape, spirituality. That is what flows from these pictures. With open pores, just as sensual fragrances take over a poorly illuminated room where a banquet is being spontaneously held. And never as strong as when Georgia’s spiritual depth is embracing the people where a break with tradition has apparently taken place long ago: amidst the armour-concrete-fragmented structural physicality of kolkhoz and suburb.
