Date: 17th May, 2022

Venue: IDS, Building 8, GTU, 75 Kostava Street, Tbilisi 

Event: Bettina Malik’s photography exhibition

Format: Permanent Display

Exhibitor: Ms. Bettina Malik, German Photographer

More photos you can see on website:  https://www.bettinamalik.com/galerie/

Poster © Bettina Malik         Photo © Nino Akhobadze

After two long years of Covid19 lockdowns, on 17th May 2022, International Design School of the Georgian Technical University hosted the exhibition of German photographer Bettina Malik "Look into my eyes". Bettina Malik is based in Cologne where studied art and mathematics and started as a photographer in 2008. In her studies of painting, she sharpened her eye for color, space and the human figure. With her feeling for color, she also focuses on the human being in her photography and lets him merge with the space. 

When her planned exhibition in Tbilisi in March 2020 was cancelled due to the pandemic, she decided to create an exhibition in an open and safe public space that can be experienced physically. After two years, for the IDS exhibition she decided not to show all of the photos from her planned exhibition but rather a selection of them. For instance, a part of the work is only the eyes - as they appear when you are looking in someone’s eyes who is wearing a face mask. But you are not looking into a typical face, you are looking into eyes of stone busts that have awakened to a new life. A play of closeness and distance, eternity and transience, immortality and the fleeting moment of the photographic instant. In another part of the IDS exhibition, the oversized black and white photos seem to have fallen out of time and radiate something universal and ageless.

Looking behind the facade and capturing what lies beneath the surface is one of her leitmotifs. She discovers the beauty in the imperfect and makes the essential visible. She finds the protagonists for her free works among her clients. Her clients include actors, architects, musicians, etc. Her philosophy is expressed in Walter Bejamin’s words: “I have nothing to say, only to show.”