Passage

Gallery Artbeat presents ‘Passage’, a solo show by Ana Gzirishvili that brings together works created in various media: leather sculptures, a spatial installation made from reclaimed materials, and a video piece. Through these hybrid forms, the artist explores liminal spaces—transitional zones where the relationships among the body, psyche, and the states of presence and absence become materially visible. The exhibition concept is based on French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu’s theory of the Skin-Ego, which reimagines the skin not merely as a biological boundary but as a psychic membrane—both protective and receptive—where physical and emotional experiences are inscribed. In her work, this idea materializes through traces of absence: marks that embed themselves in memory and evolve over time. This vision materializes in space through an installation composed of reclaimed wooden elements and fabric, arranged diagonally and vertically. The construction directly merges with the architectural framework of the space, disrupting its natural orientation and transforming the flow of movement. A white fabric, wrapped over a damaged surface, functions as a fragile covering—skin-like in its quality—simultaneously concealing and revealing the internal structure. The act of wrapping becomes a gesture of care, in which covering assumes the form of protection. At the same time, this wrapped surface gathers and binds various objects into a shared space, linking them to their surrounding environment. Through this interplay, a section of space becomes a liminal zone: a physical and symbolic passage. The installation acts as a membrane—a layer that simultaneously separates and connects the physical and the psychic. The concepts explored in the installation take on a new form in the leather sculptures. Within these sculptural objects, the act of wrapping is echoed through the technique of leather molding—a gesture that both protects and shapes. Using a process of molding wet leather, Gzirishvili creates sculptural forms that give tangible shape to ephemeral states. These pieces evoke a paradoxical sense of permanence, functioning as membranes that bear visible imprints of deformation and damage—signs of trauma and memory. Here, leather becomes a metaphor for skin: processed, stretched, and collapsed—a body that collects and retains emotional and physical experiences over time. The video work Passage extends the exhibition’s conceptual line into the language of moving image. The projection becomes a space for dreamlike, mirage-like imagery. As Anzieu and Jean Guillaumin suggest, the dream can be seen as a thin membrane—a film that protects the psyche from the residues of day and night, absorbing impressions and merging them into a unified surface. Unlike the Skin-Ego, which distinguishes between inner and outer realities, the dream membrane dissolves this boundary. Gzirishvili translates this concept into the digital realm, where the projection becomes a membrane itself—leaving a fleeting trace on the wall, always on the verge of disappearance. It mirrors the structure of a dream: ephemeral, protective, and ever-transforming. Passage, then, becomes both a metaphorical dream and a psychic film—a projection that captures the imprint of trauma and memory while existing in a continuous state of transition. Ana Gzirishvili (born 1992, Tbilisi, Georgia) lives and works in Tbilisi. Ana studied at the Tbilisi Art Academy and was a DAAD scholar and a graduate of the Universität der Künste Berlin, New Media & Film Class. Gzirishvili’s experimental practice spans installation, sculpture, film, CGI, poetry, and reading performances. She explores the liminal spaces and juncture points between beings, places, and objects, as well as between material and immaterial realms. Often, Gzirishvili’s work draws from themes such as transitionality, circulation, and displacement. By disassembling and reassembling objects and contexts both physically and intangibly, Ana observes the entanglements, incongruences, and hybrid forms that emerge from these interactions. Ana has exhibited her work in Georgia and internationally, including at West den Haag; Gallery Artbeat, Tbilisi; LC Queisser, Tbilisi; Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles, USA; MAXXI, Rome, Italy; and Kopavogur Art Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland, among others. She has recently completed her residency at Gasworks, London, UK, and has an upcoming solo exhibition part of In Practice at SculptureCenter, New York, USA in 2026.