David Meskhi’s photographs explore bodies in motion in Berlin gallery display

Georgian photographer and award-winning director David Meskhi will bring a selection of his works on human bodies in motion to a new display opening at Berlin’s Galerie für Moderne Fotografie on Friday.

Carpet Sunrise is the artist’s title for a collection of photographs capturing conditions like suspense and seeming weightlessness of athletic activities — a subject he has explored for displays in Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt and Calvert 22 Space in London over the recent years.

Like creatures from another world, the half-naked, well-trained bodies of young gymnasts in Meskhi’s photographs in the exhibition Carpet Sunrise seem to plummet from the sky.

Hanging upside-down and flying weightlessly through the air, [athletes in the images] seemingly resist the laws of gravitation with ease,” a description of the works for the show says while also noting how the “bodies are liberated from time and space” in the photographs.

The images that bring to viewers the gymnasts in their moments of athletic focus will be on view along with snaps of Meskhi’s experiences from his time in the military. A third subject for the display is celestial bodies captured by the artist’s lens, the preview said.

These “long-distance and close-up photographs of sun- and moonscapes” continue the subject of human bodies and give “human and celestial different meanings and qualities”, it noted.

The Georgian photographer previously exhibited his work in the Galerie für Moderne Fotografie in 2016, when professional athletes and urban skaters were seen in images through leaps and falls.

Read a Metal Magazine interview with David Meskhi about his work process and photographic series

The Georgian creative has brought his series to galleries in Germany and the UK over the recent years. Photo: David Meskhi.

It was followed last year by shows in London and Frankfurt, the latter in the run-up to a showcase of Georgian art and culture at the Frankfurt Book Fair through the country’s Guest of Honour status.

Born in Tbilisi, Meskhi graduated from Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film Georgian State University with a degree in photography. He is now based in the German capital.

Beside the work in still image he has worked in film direction, winning the Best First Appearance prize at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam for When the Earth Seems to Be Light, a work he co-directed with Salome Machaidze and Tamuna Karumidze.

Carpet Sunrise will be on at the Berlin gallery between 15 February-13 April.