Prayer of the One Who is Afraid of the Forest

Installation: sculpture & painting, size variable, 2024

for the Exhibition “Tales of Norway Spruce & Other Trees” at CEU Nyitott Galeria, Budapest

Artist’s text for the artwork:

"His thoughts were rolling on the road he was seeing through the car windshield, the car was going fast and the flat fields they were crossing were silent and stable. Light rain was falling on the asphalt. The water particles were touching and saturating the dried bitumen crust.

He thought about the flatness and how dust had created a light layer on the horizon and he remembered his dream, permeated with the smell of resin, which he passed by while it was boiling and that resin would become someone’s ceiling he thought…

Looking at the green-grey field, which didn't seem to have an end, he realized that the landscape he saw could not be accepted, somebody would have an urge to change.

What is the desire making us want to change and modify, cut and paste, and re-cut and re-paste? What is this struggle to co-exist with already existing? He realized that co-existence could not be endured on the terms of the environment - this was so absurdly human. The air was too moist, the rain was too wet, and the forest was too dark and he was afraid of the forest. He was scared of himself and his fears and he wanted to cover these up… So much flatness, so much emptiness...

He tried to imagine what it felt like, to be a tree in the forest, which didn’t exist. Then he turned up the radio and thought about the house they were driving to... The couch, the TV, the speakers, the walls, and the ceiling... That boiling resin, that crusty bitumen touching his nerves, those rain particles rolling on asphalt…

Tbilisi

October, 2024"