Lot 116: ANDRO WEKUA

Black Sea Surfer

overall: 350 × 800 cm (137 3/4 × 315 in)

installation in 7 parts: 3 collages, colour pencil, pencil and felt pen on paper and 4 fabrics (velours)

2004

London, Saatchi Gallery, <em>Gesamtkunstwerk: New Art From Germany</em>, 18 November 2011&#8211;15 April 2012

<em>Gesamtkunstwerk: New Art From Germany</em>, exh. cat., Saatchi Gallery, London, 2011,pp. 152&#8211;53 (illustrated)
M. Holborn, <em>The Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture</em>, Saatchi Gallery, London, 2009, pp. 516&#8211;17 (illustrated)

Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich
Acquired from the above by the present owner

&#8220;Andro Wekua&#8217;s photographs and painted sculptural installations channel fragments from his own memories of childhood into mosaiclike narratives, conveying a very real but always remote sense of place. In his work, which often features an element of tiled form, it is as if broken images are being put back together, like a seductive but ultimately unsolvable puzzle &#8230;

&#8220;Aspects of his pieces have a decidedly East European flavour. His use of geometry and his photographic montages, such as Black Sea Surfer
(2004), seem to come from the visual culture of Communism, but they also feel completely embedded within a more universal underground
cinema aesthetic.

&#8220;Although Wekua uses representational elements in most of his works, his visual symbolism is often perplexing and self-contained."

(Lupe N&#250;&#241;ez-Fern&#225;ndez, &#8216;Andro Wekua&#8217;, www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk)