December 24, 2023 - January 24, 2024

PATARA gallery is BACK! All time favourite space in an underground passageway leading to Vake park is still PATARA gallery location!

Dati Kopadze's first solo exhibition, "Sizeable Enterprise," delves into the complex and ethically fraught relationship between humans and animals, specifically focusing on the 40,000-year history of dog domestication.

Kopadze's interest in this theme stems from his childhood fascination with dogs, which was recently rekindled by his obsession with the Borzoi, observation of this breed has sparked Kopadze's curiosity about the practice of manipulating animal forms to suit human needs and aesthetic preferences.

Dati's main interest is to research the pattern which brought dogs into domestic settings, to todays "decorativeness", what are the dangers of this endless transformation/mutation/cross-breeding of living creatures.

The exhibition presents Dati Kopadze's paintings on canvases and on paper, all depicting unidentified animal breeds morphing into something yet unknown, spinning, moving, fading. They are neither fully animal nor fully something else, existing in a liminal space between the natural and the artificial.

Through this ambiguity, Kopadze tries to confront the unsettling reality of dog domestication. The selective breeding practices that have produced the hundreds of dog breeds we know today have not only altered the animals' physical appearance but also their instincts, behaviours, and even their general health.

This exhibition is an opportunity to reimagine the future of human-animal relations, one where beauty and respect exist in harmonious balance.

Dati Kopadze is VAAADS student.