Natela Iankoshvili, Alexander Adams – The Day I Never Met You
The two-artist exhibition The Day I Never Met You at Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin, brings together landscapes in spectacular colour and pinpoint detail. The explosive colour and dramatic brushwork of Georgian painter Natela Iankoshvili and the painstaking detail and anti-natural black-and-white paintings of British artist Alexander Adams form a striking complementary pairing, shown together for the first time at the gallery.
This exhibition brings together two artists who never had the opportunity to meet in person, yet who have continued to communicate through their work across time and space.
We are delighted to share the thoughts of Alexander Adams on this exceptional occasion:
“Natela Iankoshvili’s landscapes feature her most distinctive colour combination: green over black. The vitality of nature is captured and transmitted through the energy of her unrevised brushstrokes. Like a stenographer, she captures forms with brisk, reduced indications—slashes for grassy inclines, white hooks for clouds, dabs for trees. Trunks of hardy trees evoke the extremes of the Georgian climate; they sway like primitive dancers beneath undulating cloud bellies, akin to early humans responding to a harsh yet beautiful world.
Iankoshvili’s portraits show great care in capturing the personality and appearance of her subjects. They recall Neue Sachlichkeit portraits of proud, independent individuals whose confidence and attractiveness are nevertheless undercut by a sense of isolation. Her figures inhabit dark, ambiguous spaces, suggesting their hidden sides, imaginations, and dreaming time. Whatever we find familiar in their poses, clothes, and bodies, their inner selves remain concealed and unrecordable.
It is a pleasure to exhibit again in Berlin. Berlin was my home for seven years (2007–2014), a place that fascinated and haunted me. I was obsessed by the palimpsest of history found here like nowhere else in Europe. One can see traces of history—heroic and terrible—etched into stone and soil. My art deals with the power of memory and the nagging sense that the truth of a person or place always remains just out of reach. The only response is to capture this uncertainty and imprint it in paint. Defacement seems a fitting subject for a painter in Berlin, since the city itself appears as an accumulation of successive erasures.
The selected paintings are snowscapes and defaced portraits. The snowscapes depict places I know from afar or have visited. Antarctica is a landscape I have lived in through imagination; British children grow up with stories of Scott and Shackleton exploring the wilderness, making Antarctica an arena of heroic struggle—the British man’s bullring. The views of Jämtland, Sweden, result from two trips to paint and draw wooded mountains and frozen lakes. Three defaced portraits were created especially for this Berlin exhibition.
It is a great honour to exhibit alongside Natela Iankoshvili. Her dedication to capturing the essence of individuals and places reminds me of Van Gogh, another artist I admire. What inspires me most about Iankoshvili is her independence and willingness to take risks, even in the face of hostility. Remaining true to one’s principles—despite mockery and opposition—and defying fashion and state power are her greatest lessons for every artist.”
— Alexander Adams
Natela Iankoshvili (Georgia, 1918–2007) was a Georgian painter and Artist of the Georgian People (1976), awarded the Medal of Honour of the State of Georgia (1996). She lived most of her life as a citizen of the USSR and travelled extensively throughout Europe, Cuba, and Mexico, documenting her journeys in art. She is best known for her expressionist paintings of figures and landscapes of Georgia, exhibited worldwide. The Natela Iankoshvili Museum opened in Tbilisi in 2000.
Alexander Adams (born 1973, England) is an English artist, poet, and critic. He studied at Goldsmiths College, London (1992–1996), and was Artist-in-Residence at the Albers Foundation, Connecticut, in 2011. In 2018, he received an artist scholarship from the Francis Bacon Art MB Foundation, Monaco. Adams is best known for his black-and-white paintings of figures and landscapes. He lived in Berlin from 2007 to 2014 and currently lives in England.
