A Man, a Calf, and Another Man

Mendes Wood DM is pleased to announce Nika Kutateladze’s A Man, a Calf, and Another Man – the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York and his first with Mendes Wood DM. The exhibition, which intersects visions of human and animal instincts and rituals, features a suite of new oil paintings, painted on wood board, and one large format work painted on unstretched canvas.

Kutateladze’s new body of work picks up with the painter’s ongoing exploration of daily life in the small societies in the republic of Georgia. By depicting abstracted rural environments and the men who inhabit them, Kutateladze dissects tensions and camaraderie among these inhabitants, portraying weathered, stoic faces, atmospheres of both fierce independence and packs mentality in a largely depopulated setting. The natural world, which presides over Kutateladze’s often dissolving landscapes, appears in glimpses – through rivers, wolves, and mountains. At once oneiric and ecological, these symbols serve as a tool to dig deeper into the Anthropocene’s powerful effects on the psyche.

Primarily painted on wood board, Kutateladze’s works inherit and preserve material traditions of Orthodox Georgian painting while employing desaturated, muted tones. Their idiosyncratic figures’ eyes, in particular, often blend into the background or appear eclipsed, frosted over, evoking narratives of independence, strength, fragility.

Simultaneously, Kutateladze’s brushstrokes and blending techniques lend the fluid, almost smoky texture of works like Man is cutting his own hair. Reflection in the mirror (2025) and First night (2025) which evoke a dreamlike sense of dissociation between body and imagination.

Kutateladze’s practice has spanned both painting and installation. However, for this exhibition, the artist has turned his focus solely to painting and, for the first time, exhibits a large-scale work on unstretched canvas. By expanding the painted field and hammering the canvas into the wall, Kutateladze gestures toward a style of protest and manifesto. At a time when draconian laws imposed by Georgian authorities threaten image-making culture and freedom of expression, Kutateladze invites viewers to engage with layered expressions of communal existence and erasure as a form of resistance.

Nika Kutateladze (born 1989, Tblisi, Georgia), lives and works in Tblisi.

Recent exhibitions include La Maison Georgie, Maison Des Arts Georges & Claude Pompidou, Cajarc (2024); They Were Born Together, They Will Die Together, Modern Art, London (2024); My Neighbour is a House, Artbeat, Tbilisi (2023); The Way We Live Together, VITRINE Bermondsey, London (2023); Tariel is Getting Ready for Hibernation, Artbeat, Tbilisi (2021); To Protect My House While I’m Away, Tbilisi Architectural Biennial, Tbilisi (2018); Watermill on Former Pavlov Street, Kunsthalle Tbilisi, Tbilisi (2018).