Past
Events
ARSHAK SARKISSIAN
Tera-Genesis
1 July
– 29
july
2015
Arshak Sarkissian’s art is all about contemporary man, the
complexities and controversies that surround him as well as his
metaphysical peculiarities as refracted through the artist’s
imagination. Convinced that the world is a pluralistic place
that is not just limited to physical reality and in which many
worlds – directly inspired by the arts and literature – are just
as factual, his world is informed by the Magic Realism of South
America as well as Asiatic Shamanistic traditions. Sarkissian
illustrates the supernatural aspects of every day life in his
art. For him as an artist, the comprehension of multidimensional
realities is fundamental in recognizing man’s own reality, and
he is fascinated in exploring the extremes of human behaviour
and nature. His work penetrates into the human psyche which he
calls ‘its personality’.
Sarkissian is an artist as well as an anthropologist of various
states of mind who leaves room to multiple physiognomic
perplexing interpretations. He is constantly exploring the human
personality with its multi-dimensional, multi-layered facets.
His drawings are peopled with self-conscious entities that seem
to be in psychological experiments with themselves in a process
of self-discovery and evolution. It is through such experiments
that the personality gives way to the genesis of either a
monstrous abnormality or a hybrid of fauna or flora, until human
and inhuman ultimately become indistinguishable before the next
stage of metamorphosis.
Arshak Sarkissian’s drawings express his never-ending yearning
for change and the novel. They are figurative as well as
contemporary, and are greatly influenced by Renaissance art –
the meticulous approach to drawing and the synthesis of both
realistic and mystical elements being germane to his art. His
characters have an eccentric temperament and an exotic
disposition – as this is a vital component in the making of
‘personality’ – and his animal hybrids always divulge extra
dimensions and expressions along the way. They emerge from an
ancient world that was populated by half human, half animal
prototypes, whose mythologies revealed complex worlds, but his
drawings place these creatures in a post-modern, contemporary
world where they still grapple with their daemons.
Arshak Sarkissian was born in Gyumri, Armenia in 1981. After
completing his education at the National Aesthetic Center of Art
in Armenia, he participated in a residency under Stass Paraskos
at Lemba Art School in Cyprus supported by the Pharos Arts
Foundation. Sarkissian has had solo shows at the Albemarle
Gallery in London, Gavriel Gallery in Bremen, Mildberry Gallery
in Moscow, in Paris and New York, and participated in group
exhibitions in the Center for Contemporary Experimental Art and
the Gyumri International Biennale in Armenia, the Charlie Smith
Gallery in London, the Harvest Gallery in California and the
Marie Pavgas Art Gallery in North Carolina. He has been
commissioned to create work for the passenger terminals at
Zvartnots International Airport in Armenia. He has participated
in numerous art projects, amongst others, as part of his
residency in the OMI International Arts Centre in New York, in
the “Stand Up For Your Rights” Design and Illustration Programme
in Buntingford, UK, and the Andorran National Commission for the
UNESCO International Art Camp in 2014. Sarkissian works and
lives in Yerevan, Armenia. His works can be found in several
important private collections
