In the 5th century AD, a Syrian theologian named Narsay wrote a text about the creation of the world. In it, he spoke about the school of angels: that angels also have their own lessons, in which they learn to understand the nature of “beauty and light”, “the cause of the voice” and “the power of meaning”.
Angels see everything. After all, they learn this fr om childhood. Not only do they see everything, but they see everything at the same time. ‘And the reptile of the sea underwater passage, / And the vegetation of the valley vine.’ What do angels see when they look at us? Maybe they know something we don't know, something that is not taught in non-angelic schools? For example, that one remembers about us. Who remembers? The angels themselves? Or someone older? Or that there is not a single person who is forgotten. That even in the darkest times, when darkness is both inside and outside, someone secretly holds your hand. I don't know what the angels think when they look at us. That is what they always think about. I would like to know this.
A person looking at the new paintings by Georgy Totibadze may feel a slight gentle dizziness. Because it is not immediately clear where the world discovered by these paintings is seen from. And what is it on them – is it a rose bush, is it a night city? Yes? But from what distance were they written, from wh ere did the person who created them see them? From an angelic flight? Or is it a portrait of an atom, is it a biography of a human cell? Or maybe this is an attempt to say – to the rose bush, and to the atoms, and to the rivers, and to invisible people: “You are remembered”?
I find it interesting to imagine that by examining these paintings, we can try to see how angels view the world. After all, they see everything simultaneously, everything that happens in the world and inside humans. Maybe these are angels from elementary school who are just learning to understand the invisible to us: the nature of beauty and light, the cause of the voice, the power of meaning.
And from the back of the desk they whisper, prompting us: “You are remembered, you are not alone.” Can you hear them, rosebush?
Text by Philip Dzyadko
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