Levan Manjavidze was born in 1977 in Tbilisi/Georgia.
After graduating in 1999 from Tbilisi state Institute of Theatre & Cinematography,
He specialised in traditional renaissance painting techniques in Florence/Italy,
2003-06 studied at Utrecht school of arts in The Netherlands.
Since 2007 Levan Manjavidze lives and works in Berlin/Germany & Tbilisi/Geogia.

Considering painting as an anthropological science, Levan focuses on representation of human beings,
His work originates from study of human psyche and subconscious symbolism, which he translates into visual language.
Levan develops bodies of works articulating with each other like puzzle without limiting himself to a single medium.
Most of works are oil paintings and photomontages.
Levan looks for correspondences between imagination and images of the real world by taking photographs and researching through Internet data.

His interest is the chaotic opposition between the reality of the world and the way we experience it.
In that sense Levan’s work is mostly autobiographical and the result of the observations of daily routines & social orders.
He explores the essential mechanism of a human being and study it from different angles:
from outside such as in communication processes as well as from inside such as in a biological system.


Maud Piquion
Curator, project manager and consultant based in Berlin, Germany

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An Irritation of Spirit
Once upon a time I entered in a cave. There, some multi-layered portions of space were encountering flat surfaces.
I saw pieces of bodies, bits of walls, sections of plane colors, smooth fading members, shiny chromatic organs, worm-like faces, jumping elements, lions, hearts, fingers, plants, separated components, married substances, crying children, clothes, mixed grounds, waves.
Flat Man, a.k.a Devil Doll, a.k.a Slutty Penis-Drama king of Heart-Baby Face Killer, likes to use the word ambivalence. Or ambivalent.
I think it s a word to make sense out of our general and inevitable confusion, in the perceptions we have from the world. (Generally words do)
He brings together an image, in a dissected image. As function body and brain, as eye and hand... Well yes: it s a painting.
The color shifts here, the subject is stuck there. And over here, and there, an alive-eye in a tinted-block does not move of an inch.
Later, there will be blood. Later, there will be love.
The symbols appear just like the faces, stage after stage, layer after layer: mazed. It s a puzzle.
Representing pieces of the world, maybe as a cohabitation of worlds.
Find an impossible harmony.
Is it faith? Is it magic? Hope is magic and magic is faith, and so because faith is hope, no surprise that the snake eats his tale and the cat licks his ass.
I mean, You can't grasp the world in an image, but intricate some ambivalent elements, like catching a fish with a worm..?
Peut être.

Paula Parker
NEOs researcher @  Borderline Art Center, Houston, Texas.