Orchestra: A Series by Gia Bugadze

Beethoven, Symphony No 5, 80 x 110 cm, oil on canvas

The series, created in 2006, comprised nearly 60 works. In this body of work, Gia Bugadze explores the relationship between painting and music, approaching the orchestra as a complex structure in which different elements come together to form a unified whole.

Gia Bugadze writes:

“An orchestra is a multi-plane and multicolor sounding; it is the consonance and harmony between the dissimilar. While painting is the orchestration of images and reflections, and its sounding is the unity of three main internal components. The rhythm in music is the same as composing-geometrization in painting. The harmony in painting corresponds with the colorful-tonal wholeness, while the image-reflection, pictoriality, with the melody. Taken as one whole, painting is a visual hearing, as music, in its turn, is a hearable visibility. All should be imbued with all-embracing and all-consuming melody-imagery.”

Across the works of the Orchestra series, musical structure is translated into colour, movement, rhythm and pictorial space. Rather than simply depicting an orchestra, Bugadze seeks to make the experience of music visible through painting.

Gustav Mahler. Symphony No. 5, 250 × 140 cm, oil on canvas

Gustav Mahler. Symphony No. 2, 110 x 80 cm, oil on canvas

Gustav Mahler. Symphony No. 3, 80 x 110 cm, oil on canvas

Richard Wagner, Tannhäuser. Overture, 80 x 110 cm, oil on canvas

Beethoven, Piano Concerto No 5, 80 x 110 cm, oil on canvas

Hector Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique, 80 x 110 cm, oil on canvas