Polina Berlin Gallery is pleased to present a two-person exhibition of work by Georgian artist Ana Gzirishvili and Latvian artist Amanda Ziemele, on view from September 27 through October 28, 2023. Engaging in a spatial intervention of the gallery, the exhibition invites a contextual understanding of space, objects, and their meaning.

Ana Gzirishvili's sculptural works are assemblages of repurposed handbags and leather goods, found or purchased second-hand. Mounted on a wall or installed as part of a site-specific installation, the resulting structures appear akin to limbs. Gzirishvili probes notions of objecthood and the object-oriented ontology of French philosopher Bruno Latour through her interdisciplinary art practice. When detached from their original purpose, stripped of functionality, and displaced from their original owner, her assemblages appear like arms flexed in a frozen momentum; prepared for an embrace or perhaps a punch to the gut.

Amanda Ziemele negotiates space with her defined approach to painting; her oversized shaped canvases, voluminous and biomorphic, result in a palpable atmospheric intervention. Ziemele's artistic practice considers architecture, philosophy, history and collective memory in dialogue with the formal qualities of painting and the ideas and contexts that surround it. Her works inhabit space in uncanny ways, triggering situational associations which often employ humor and paradox. In turn, her measured use of form and color belies the outsized spatial and aesthetic impact of her paintings.

This is the first time Ziemele and Gzirishvili will be exhibiting work in the United States. Notably, Ziemele will represent Latvia at the upcoming 60th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale and Grizishvili's recent solo exhibition at E.A. Shared Space in Tbilisi was reviewed in the September 2023 issue of Artforum.

Ana Gzirishvili (b. 1992) lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia. She is a DAAD scholar and a graduate of Universität der Künste Berlin, New Media & Film Class led by professor Hito Steyerl. Throughout her experimental practice, Ana Gzirishvili has made use of mediums ranging from film and lens-based media to CGI, from drawing to poetry, reading performances, and sculpture. Her projects often examine visual and socio-cultural narratives of a space, object, or event addressing the feeling of displacement in and in-between material and immaterial realms.

Amanda Ziemele (b. 1990) lives and works in Riga, Latvia. She graduated from the Visual Arts Department of the Art Academy of Latvia with a BA in Painting. She completed diploma studies in the study programme of Interdisciplinary and Experimental Painting at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and was awarded a Post-Graduate Scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Ziemele has been the subject of several solo exhibitions and participated in collaborative art projects in Latvia and internationally. She is a recipient of the ‘Purvītis Prize’ (2021), awarded for her exhibition 'Quantum Hair Implants' on view at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (2019). As part of the Prize, she was invited to develop a solo exhibition 'Sun Has Teeth' at the Cupola hall at the Latvian National Museum of Art (2023). Ziemele’s work is included in the collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA), and the VV Foundation, Zuzāns collection.