Untitled. Srawberry Andreevna 2015

This untitled work by Alevtyna Kakhidze looks like it was made with felt-tip pens on scraps of paper. I love this because the quick, sketch-like marks and informal presentation open up art-making as a kind of process. The artist uses red and blue to create a kind of map or diagram, scrawling words and images across the surface. See how the words are almost like drawings, and the drawings are almost like words? Take, for example, the figure of a woman encircled by looping lines. Or the arrow pointing from a house to a figure. There’s a raw, intimate quality to this, like a page torn from a notebook. Kakhidze’s work reminds me of the drawings of the American artist, Jess Collins. Like Jess, Kakhidze uses collage, text, and image to create layered, poetic compositions. For me, this piece embodies the ongoing conversation of art, which favors questions and possibility over answers and conclusions.