CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- Thea Djordjadze creates installations of sculptural objects that join traditional mediums such as plaster, clay, and wood with everyday materials like steel, foam, and linoleum. Rectilinear steel and wood constructions drawing on modernist interior architecture and design are sited together with handmade clay and plaster shapes. Djordjadze’s work often gestures towards the furniture of museum display—such as pedestals and vitrines— while resisting the categorical separation of artwork from its means of presentation. She also resists the systematization to which display supports are put, such as when a foam slab approximating the dimensions of a mattress is displayed on its side caught in a thin steel structure. Her use of linoleum—an inexpensive floor covering widely used for kitchen floors in the early 20th century—further brings a sense of domesticity to the museum. Djordjadze arranges her work on the floor, leaning against walls, with larger works enclosing smaller ones, such that the work and the space in which it is installed are mutually informed.

In 2007, Djordjadze began using modernist furniture, particularly that of Le Corbusier, as molds to cast wooden frames. These frames were initially meant to operate as scaffolds or “invisible plinths” on which clay or plaster (materials which in turn are widely used for molds and casts) sculptures could be exhibited. Over time, Djordjadze has shifted the material for these frames from wood to steel, and what were display constructions have become sculptures themselves. For the List’s Hayden Gallery, the artist is creating five structures composed of wood and steel, their medium and form such that they are neither solely supports for other works nor sculptures in themselves but rather essential parts of the works they enclose. The scale and shape of these structures relate to the gallery’s large window, much as the window frames visitors’ views of the adjacent Lower Courtyard by Richard Fleischner and passersby’s views of her work in the gallery’s interior. The window becomes part of the space, and the space part of the work.

Thea Djordjadze (born 1971, Tbilisi, Georgia) studied under Rosemarie Trockel at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and currently lives and works in Berlin. Her recent exhibitions include the Georgian Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Germany; Malmö Konsthall, Sweden; Kunstverein Lingen Kunsthalle, Germany; Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; The Common Guild, Glasgow; and a major solo installation at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany. Selected group exhibitions include the 2003 Venice Biennale; 2008 Lyon Biennale; and the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art in 2008; as well as exhibitions at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hayward Gallery, London; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Sculpture Centre, New York; and ACCA, Melbourne.

Thea Djordjadze is curated by MIT List Visual Arts Center director Paul C. Ha and assistant curator Alise Upitis.