Irakli Bugiani is a Georgian-born, Düsseldorf-based painter whose work explores the tension between natural and man-made worlds. Born in Tbilisi, he grew up during the final years of the Soviet Union—a time marked by uncertainty and transformation. Trained as both a painter and an art historian, Bugiani blurs the boundary between the external world and introspection. His dreamlike oil paintings layer expressive brushwork with vivid color, rough textures, and a psychedelic sensibility. Shaped by shifting cultures and system transitions, they render reality as something both poetic and cinematic—an in-between space where memory, landscape, and perception collide.
His exhibitions include Links (Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, 2024), NADA Miami (2023), Vision Seeker (Gallery ArtBeat, Tbilisi, 2022), and To See a World in a Grain of Sand (Georgian National Museum, 2016). From 2014 to 2015, he initiated 191°S, an artist-driven project in dialogue with music and nightlife, with murals at Salon des Amateurs and Weltkunstzimmer Düsseldorf.
At MacDowell, Bugiani developed a new body of paintings in response to the surrounding landscape and the global atmosphere of instability—reflecting on fragility, transformation, and the emotional weight of place.
Portrait by Onur Yurtsever
