Levan Songulashvili Georgia, b. 1991

Levan Songulashvili was born on August 17, 1991, in Tbilisi, Georgia, during a period of profound political transformation, as the Soviet Union was dissolving and Georgia was reasserting its independence. He began painting in early childhood and received formal training in Tbilisi throughout his teenage years. In 2013, he graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts with a B.F.A. in Drawing and Printmaking. He subsequently moved to New York, where he won several merit scholarships and became the first Georgian artist to earn an M.F.A. with honors in Painting from the New York Academy of Art. He divides his time between New York and Tbilisi.

Songulashvili's practice is rooted in figurative painting but consistently pushes against its boundaries, blurring representation and abstraction through a rigorous engagement with philosophy, mythology, and psychoanalysis. The thinkers he returns to most persistently, among them Heidegger, Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Freud, Jung, and Lacan, inform an artistic approach centered on the theme of mutability: the shifting relationship between the individual and the collective, between memory and erasure, between the visible and the unknowable. His practice extends beyond the canvas into site-specific installation, video, sound, and mural, and he has collaborated with figures including the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, who named his final composition after one of Songulashvili's painting series; the fashion designer Issey Miyake; and the musician Iggy Pop, in a project with Turner Prize-winner Jeremy Deller at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2016).

Songulashvili's work is held in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York, where he is the first Georgian artist to be included; the Tbilisi Museum of Contemporary Art; the Georgian Museum of Fine Arts; the Adjara State Art Museum; the BREUS Foundation; and the Museum of the Rustaveli National Theatre, Tbilisi. Among the awards and distinctions he has received: the Presidential Award of Georgia; the Prime Minister's Scholarship of Georgia; the New York State Assembly Award for Achievements and Contributions to the Arts; the People's Choice Award, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition; the title of Artist of the Year and Best Creative Work of the Year (2017); the London Global Talent Art Prize (2023); and inclusion in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list (2020).

Songulashvili's solo exhibition history is extensive and international in scope. Key presentations include The STYX, a two-venue exhibition curated by art historian Mark Gisbourne (2018), accompanied by a monograph presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair; Stoicheîon, a multimedia solo project at Objectifs, Centre for Photography and Film, Singapore (2019); Triptychos at the Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery, Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi, curated by Basak Senova (2021); Ad Infinitum at Factory Tbilisi (2022); Noli Me Tangere at the Batumi Art Museum (2022); and Noli Me Tangere at the Presidential Palace, Georgia (2023). Group exhibitions have taken his work to the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Saatchi Gallery, London; Sotheby's, New York; the YARAT Contemporary Art Centre, Baku (2024); and MoMA Tbilisi, among many others. He was shortlisted to represent Georgia at the 2022 Venice Biennale.

Levan Songulashvili's relationship with KORNFELD Galerie Berlin is anchored in the artist residency program at 68projects by KORNFELD, the gallery's project space at Fasanenstrasse 68 in Berlin. His first presentation with the gallery was the two-person exhibition Black | Sea (March 16 to April 21, 2018), in which his black-and-white philosophical paintings were shown alongside the color-driven work of German painter Christian Awe, the pairing structured around shared themes of water, energy, depth, and the passage between life and the hereafter. In 2024, Songulashvili was included in Berlin on My Mind: Celebrating 10 Years of Artistic Residency at 68projects by KORNFELD, the milestone group exhibition bringing together all twenty-one artists who have participated in the residency program since its founding.

Levan Songulashvili's practice continues to evolve across media and geographies, with each new body of work deepening his inquiry into the mysteries of human existence, collective memory, and the enduring power of image-making.