Max Machaidze
Max Machaidze is the king of the block. The D-Block, that is, Tbilisi’s Stamba Hotel’s in-house artist studios and residency program. A visual artist, designer and hip-hop musician, Machaidze creates large-scale sculptural work that can be seen installed throughout the grounds of the expansive hotel grounds. With his studio also located in Stamba’s D-Block, an undeveloped wing of the hotel that has been converted into two floors of open-plan artist studios, the proximity of his workspace seems to aid his prolific practice.
Producing works that range from massive cement spirals that sit in the hotel’s courtyard, to a fully-functioning replica of a ‘90s ATM so realistic it blurs the lines between art and utilitarian object, Machaidze draws on found ephemera and Soviet remnants from the country’s fraught past. Sourcing found objects as the basis for his materials, Machaidze frequents abandoned auto-body shops for sheet metal, which he then spray-paints with his namesake designs that echo his background in skateboarding and graffiti.
A longtime fixture at Stamba, Machaidze urged the Adjara Hotel Group’s owner, Temur Ugulava, to reserve the section of the building for creative output, rather than transforming it into commercial property. Described as a creative mastermind in his own right, Ugulava is a significant supporter of Georgian contemporary art, and took to Machaidze’s idea to use the area as “experimental space and artist studios.”
Not one to define himself by any one medium, if by day Machaidze is an artist and entrepreneur who started his own moped-sharing business called Qari, by night he plays sold-out shows under the moniker KayaKata, rapping a dizzying rhythm of melodic hip-hop beats sung in his native Georgian. When I ask how his myriad of projects come together, he tells me simply, “Whether it’s objects, sounds or words, it’s all poetry.”