Partisans’ Strategies for a Rough Landscape is not Gia’s commentary on his own art practice. On the contrary, it is his permanent, endless manifesto – some new pieces are forthcoming. The book preserves Gia’s art practice, and through that he re-emerges as a great artist and thinker. The forms and discourses that inform his practice seem to him such scarce resources that they need to be enlarged and expanded, starting from the very core fundamentals; and since artists are seldom philosophers, Gia cuts the figure of kind of stranger in the midst of our artistic environment. He is well-known as a prominent provocateur in the art world, but this challenging nature runs so deep, to the very essence of his being, that he never strays into banality. The intelligence is never something he seeks to hide behind – but he needs the opposition of God to act as some kind of fine tool in the process, as is clearly demonstrated within the book. On the one hand you are exposed to bold and zesty contemporary French thinking, on the other, German rationalism and its metaphysical conclusions come into play, but in the end it is all blown up and evaporated into thin air. Irony and frivolity go hand in hand with stringent discursive thought. Gia demonstrates an extraordinary grasp of an immense range of innovative thought and epistemic competences, but he remains undisturbed by any possessive attachment to all that knowledge – it is needed just to be given away. He never intends to gain anything out of this process, and this altruism shines clearly throughout his texts.


‘Most books allow you to stay cool, but some never do. That can be the product of the nature of the book, but in some cases personal motives may be the reason. Both are key factors in this case, I think. Partisans’ Strategies for a Rough Landscape is a book where it’s impossible to remain cold-blooded. It can make your cool mind hot and, if needed, chill your hot head down. It refreshes your views and even makes you experience some kind of state of self-denial.’ /Sh. Iatashvili, writer, critic/


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