Bio

Lado was born in 1970 in Sukhumi (Abkhazia, Georgia, USSR). He studied painting at the Sukhumi College of Art, graduating in 1993. As a result of the military conflict in Abkhazia, Lado had to flee his native city and move to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. He spent eleven years at a refugee settlement in Tkhneti, near Tbilisi. While living there, he continued his studies and graduated from the Tbilisi State Art Academy with a Master’s degree in Painting and Printmaking in 2001. Since then, he has lived and worked in Georgia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Hungary and the United States.

Statement

My artist training is very heavy in traditional methods of drawing and painting. It is natural for me to work with pen and ink, though I’ve spent a significant amount of time in all mediums. I’ve become interested in melding the old-school technique of hand drawn, classical images with a more contemporary representation.

My works, I hope, will create the sense of being a time traveler – moving both forward and backwards in time. These images don’t HAVE to be hand drawn, but that’s the medium I’ve chosen. This is Jean Baudrillard’s simulacra in action: depicting or copying something that had no original to begin with, or no longer has an original. In some ways, this copy becomes the true original.

– Lado Pochkhua