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Trust Issues: Art Confronts a Crisis of Faith in Berlin
By Archyde News – April 4, 2025
In an era defined by the proliferation of AI-generated content, the erosion of institutional credibility, and the ever-present threat of disinformation campaigns, trust has become a commodity as valuable as it is scarce. The “Trust Issues” exhibition, which opened April 3, 2025, at Kornfeld Galerie in Berlin, directly confronts this sense of unease. Curated by Nina Chkareuli Mdivani, a Tbilisi-born and New York-based curator, writer, and researcher, the exhibition features the works of three artists—Saelia Aparicio, Gonzalo Garcia, and Rusudan khizanishvili—who, rather than offering simple solutions, delve into the complexities of how trust is built, tested, and ultimately, broken.
Through a diverse range of media including sculpture,drawing,and painting,these artists collectively pose a question that resonates deeply within the current American landscape: What does it mean to trust—in governmental systems,monolithic corporations,familiar faces,and even ourselves—when the ground constantly feels as though it’s shifting beneath our feet?
The exhibition smartly avoids heavy-handed pronouncements.Instead, it creates a space ripe for introspection, sparking both discomfort and the potential for profound self-examination. The exhibited pieces function less as definitive statements and more as catalysts for critical thought, visually exploring the intricate intersections of politics, personal identity, cultural mythology, and the experience of embodiment. In a time where trust in established institutions is dwindling and the digital world distorts our understanding of reality, Trust Issues proposes that art, with its inherent ambiguity and resistance to oversimplification, might potentially be the ideal medium for exploring these crucial questions.
Saelia Aparicio: Sculpting Hope in a Posthuman World
London-based Saelia Aparicio blurs the boundaries between drawing and sculpture, the figurative and the abstract, humor and seriousness.Her most striking pieces are her anthropomorphic stools—gender-fluid, hybrid creations that playfully challenge the rigid classifications that dominate contemporary life. With their exaggerated,soft-textured forms,they defy easy categorization. Are they chairs? Living beings? Perhaps a new kind of furniture designed for a posthuman future? These are objects that simultaneously invite interaction and resist simple definition.
Aparicio’s choice of materials—wood, clay, fabric, glass—gives her work a palpable sense of presence. The visible seams and textures of her handcrafted pieces highlight vulnerability. Her sculpture isn’t about creating monuments, but showcasing the body—open, fragile, and ever-changing. The accompanying drawings expand on these themes, charting a surreal landscape of mutated forms and folkloric imagery. While grounded in a feminist perspective on the body, Aparicio’s work ventures into the realms of speculation and absurdity. This resonates with current discussions in the U.S.around body positivity, gender identity, and challenging societal norms.
Unlike the other artists in “Trust Issues,” Aparicio injects a sense of hope, even utopia, into her exploration of trust. Instead of focusing on betrayal, she investigates how bodies (both human and non-human) can become sources of resistance and creativity. A particularly poignant element of her exhibition is the hidden “temple” inside one of her sculptures—a private space for reflection,hope,and the emergence of new ways of being.
Gonzalo Garcia: The Brutal Truths of Power and Violence
In stark contrast to Aparicio’s subtle metaphors, Gonzalo Garcia confronts viewers with unflinching visual force. His oil paintings—figurative, confrontational, and intensely cinematic—explore the complex relationship between violence, power, and trust.
Garcia, based in Mexico, draws inspiration from the visual style and narratives of 1970s Mexican cinema, including films like El Castillo de la Pureza (The Castle of Purity) and Los Cachorros (The Cubs), crafting emotionally charged scenes that straddle the line between theatrical drama and allegory. This approach echoes the themes seen in American films and television shows that examine systemic injustice and the abuse of power, such as “The Wire” and “Spotlight.”
Scenes of castration, physical domination, and ambiguous acts unfold across his canvases, rendered in a style that is both visceral and poetic. Substantially, the faces of both the aggressors and the victims are always obscured. This purposeful absence prevents easy moral judgments and forces viewers to grapple with their own potential complicity. Who are these figures? could they be us?
Garcia’s work transcends a simple depiction of violence, instead focusing on the conditions that allow violence to become invisible, normalized, or even accepted. His strategic removal of identity forces the viewer to confront their own preconceptions. At the same time, his allusions to the 1963 student massacres in Mexico embed his work within a ancient and political context, drawing attention to state-sponsored violence and repression. His paintings capture the conflict between public and private realms, external control and internal resistance, political oppression and personal queer identity. This resonates with contemporary American discussions on police brutality, prison reform, and LGBTQ+ rights.
“Garcia’s work is not simply a meditation on violence, but on the conditions that make violence invisible, normalized, or perversely acceptable.”
Rusudan Khizanishvili: Myth and Protest in the Shadows of Control
The paintings of Rusudan khizanishvili, an artist based in Tbilisi, exist in the space between myth and protest, past and present. Created against the backdrop of the 2024 political unrest in Georgia, her latest series uses symbolic imagery—red curtains, veiled figures, and ornamental patterns—to investigate the mechanisms of control that lurk beneath the surface of society.
Khizanishvili’s figures are timeless, neither ancient nor modern, neither male nor female. They are abstract, symbolic, and despite their anonymity, charged with emotion. Her bold palette—dominated by reds, blacks, golds, and deep blues—evokes both danger and divinity. The recurring curtain motif symbolizes not only literal theater but also the political stage itself: what is revealed, what is concealed, and who controls what we see.At times, these figures recall Persian miniatures or medieval icons; at others, they suggest the techno-mysticism of science fiction. Yet, despite these art-historical references, they speak directly to the present moment.
Khizanishvili’s works are allegorical, but not distant or abstract.They feel deeply personal, as if the artist is grappling not only with the state of her country but also with the fundamental question of agency: How do we live, create, and maintain inner peace in a society that constantly tries to dictate our actions? Her work is intrinsically linked to the precariousness of the Georgian political environment, particularly in relation to Russia. While not overtly political,her paintings are haunted by the impossibility of trust in a world where sovereignty itself is at risk. this theme resonates strongly in the U.S., where discussions about foreign influence, election security, and the spread of disinformation are constant.
Living Without Trust: A Path Forward?
the artists in “Trust Issues” present trust not as a given certainty,but as an ever-changing landscape shaped by political agendas,personal identities,and technological advancements. While each artist—Aparicio,Garcia,and Khizanishvili—employs radically different artistic styles,they share a common skepticism toward appearances,a resistance to easy answers,and a belief in art’s potential to disrupt our perceptions,even in subtle ways.
Ultimately, the exhibition doesn’t promise to restore trust—an unachievable task. Instead, it offers strategies for navigating a world where trust is fragile and conditional. It encourages us to be discerning, critical, and thoughtful in who and what we choose to trust. In a time when manipulative forces are constantly at play, Trust Issues calls
