Dive Into Levan Kiknavelidze’s Illusions of the Sea
Dive Into Levan Kiknavelidze’s Illusions of the Sea
The Architect Pushes Boundaries on Illusion, Reality, and Frames
Photographer
Levan Kiknavelidze
Words:
Caroline Meeusen
Levan Kiknavelidze combines architecture and photography to tell mesmerizing stories. He captures the world in frames, creating a world where illusion and reality blend into one entirely unique piece.
To him, these two mediums, photography and architecture, are everything needed to communicate a message. “While architecture tries to become more local in its wide-scaled environment, the photography can broadcast a framed locality into a global scale,” he says. “Especially now in an increasingly digitalized world even a very local architecture can be extended worldwide by means of photography.”
Levan’s works almost look like Surrealist paintings, many times depicting the ocean, framed by a wall, door, or window. With this series, Levan wants to demonstrate “a way of seeking for perfectionism,” referring to the “staged scenes of our lives that are often depicted on social media.” Levan is again playing with what is real and what is not. While the picturesque view appears real, it can also be disbelieved, he says. “The doors or windows, which have been cut out by me and replaced by something, can be described as an illusion.”
The series has even more of a story to it. It’s not only a combination of Levan’s two passions, but it’s also an intersection of his childhood and his present life. The front of the photos are mostly taken in Berlin where he is currently based and the framed sea is the Black Sea in Batumi, Georgia where he is originally from. Through stunning imagery, Levan bridges the 3000 km between Berlin and Batumi and past and present.
