BIO
George Bezani is an American painter and visual artist based in New York City. Bezani was born in Tbilisi, Georgia and received his MFA in fashion design from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna in 2011. After winning various awards for his work in fashion design, including the prestigious Fondazione Claudio Buziol prize in Venice in 2008, Bezani received an Outstanding Artist award supported by the Austrian Ministry of Culture in 2011. His work has been shown at the MAK Museum in Vienna, Arnhem Biennale, Guggenheim in Bilbao and CICA in South Korea, among others. After a successful decade spent in the fashion industry Bezani now solely dedicates his time to his painting practice. In 2022 he was awarded a two-month artist residency by Liquitex in New York, as part of its residency and mentoring program.
ARTIST STATEMENT
George Bezani decodes the compositions of quotidian moments, altering and reorganizing them through his own visual language. Inspired by Japanese Nihonga paintings, he uses a unique, self-taught mark making technique that developed from his diverse experimentations over the past five years.
His paintings convey the fragility of our modern world, with slow, meditative brush movements and bold coloured marks on the canvas. The works are a dialogue between the painter and the moments of reality that he reinterprets. Bezani draws inspiration from personal and collected photographs, collages, sketches and images.
Bezani’s 2021 series of drawings _Nowhere to Go_ is a visual diary created with short reflective lines of ink on paper. Diving into the memories and dreams, elapsed lives and beliefs, he reflects on the skittish nature of the past, and its unclear, decomposed moments. The artist tries to find strength, resilience and light through repetitive movements. In the series he draws amulets, necklaces, garments and other objects of desire as symbols of armor: a protective second skin against the destructiveness of digital era.
In his latest series of works _TenShen_, Bezani explores the antagonistic impact of technology. Its vigorous, authoritative power pulls societies apart, and it remains incompatible with lived reality. It also provides the possibility for extreme escapism and debilitates our capacity to collectively navigate the future. In these works, characters are digitally infused with cybernated dopamine or oxytocin, ephemeral figures with the shadow of doubt are combined with gadgets, and ambiguous vast network landscapes are filled with desolation and tension.
CV
Education
2011 MFA Fashion Department, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, AT
2004 BA Architecture, Georgian Technical University, Tbilisi, GE
Exhibitions
2023 “Breath” CICA Museum, Gyeonggi-do, KOR
2022 Speaklow, New York City, USA
2020 “ Show Off “, MAK Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, AT
2018 “ Mode als Statement” , Galeriefreihausgasse, Villach, AT
2016 NJAL at Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City, USA
2011 Arnhem Biennale, Curated by Carlo Wijnands, Arnhem, NL
2010 Bilbao International Art & Fashion Competition, Guggenheim Bilbao, ES
Residencies
2022 Liquitex Residency Program, New Jersey, USA
Awards
2023 Art Vue Foundation Award, Brussels, BE
2022 Liquitex Award, New York City, USA
2011 Outstanding Artist Award supported by the Austrian Ministry of Culture , Vienna, AT
Der Standard - Rondo Voeslauer Award, Vienna, AT
2009 Swiss Textiles Sponsorship Prize, Zurich, CH
SONG Concept Store Prize, Vienna, AT
2008 Fondazione Claudio Buziol Prize, Venice, IT