oil on canvas
1,5x2 m

Oleg Timchenko is a contemporary Georgian artist, known for his expressive paintings as well as the numerous happenings he produced. Since the 1980s he has appeared at the Georgian and international art scene. He was one of the founders of the "10th floor group", a group of Georgian happening-artists, who busted the Soviet framework of art even at that time. In his paintings, he often realises symbolic, grotesque or dream-like motives. Some of them are painted in classical style, which he commands as a graduate of the Tbilisi State Academy of Art.

"Ophelia" was born upon the idea of creating a projection in waters. Timchenko realised this idea first in 1998, two years after finishing the painting, in Prague. There he installed a projector at the Charles bridge and a canvas of 8 by 3 metres beneath the surface of the Moldova. After a subsequent exhibition in Bratislava, he installed a projector over an aquarium of the original size of the painting 1999 in Paris. At all times, the tragic female character in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" roused fascination. The themes surrounding Ophelia have a close link to all of Timchenko's work. For him she embodies the paradox of "beauty" and "transitoriness". Timchenko: "I paint neither trees nor leaves. I paint the wind touching the leaves."—in this case the water touching Ophelia.