What attracts one attention at first sight is that the paintings of Armen Gevorkian reflect
individuality, which is impossible to attain. It seems that everything is already done, seen
and experienced in figurative art, so that it becomes rather difficult to avoid a fate of
becoming an appendage to famous analogues. But Armen is such an artist who could never accept
the role of a satellite, and we can apparently feel it both from his unusual, exceptional
handwriting and irrational way of thinking.
Lacking daylight in his boxroomlike studio, completely isolated from the outward life, Armen travels with his personages, moving from one painting to another, changing surroundings and situations, and never leaving this rather strange, non-existing, but such an organic and native State, and never wishing to emigrate. Neatness and order he has established here are worthy of respect: no spontaneity, nothing from Bohemian chaos or artistic disorder, but at the same time not a bit of mathematical coldness.
There are several themes repeatedly attracting artists attention and creative energy: “Horsewoman”, “Single combat”, “Butterfly hunters”, “Playing cards”, “Shooting-range” and others, but one can never find mechanical reiteration in his paintings, each time he shares new experience, new sensations with his characters, each time he lets them “get ripen” and then perfects and enriches his creations with new colors. The outline of plot in these unique one-act performances is concentrated on the culmination point. Don’t try to find hidden meaning, don’t wait for mysterious ending, and don’t seek for morals. These laconic, apparently stagy stories are just games of a grown-up human being – neither infantile, nor naïve. They are meditations of a kind dramatist who prefers to see conflicts only on the stage. Tune the Time and listen to the music of the Mediaeval poetry…
Occasionally the vibrating light catches out from the depth of the space other inhabitants of this world – similarly alive and equally lifeless. Flowers. The flowers envelop, ennoble, or strangle and fight with dummies. Nobody wins in this battle, for they embody each other. Nobody wins when the metal fights with body, the motion – with static, the instant – with infinity, the light – with darkness, the man – with the woman, the reality – with illusion, the play – with life. They are one and indivisible. They are love, and they can’t exist without each other.
All the characters acting in this world look like statues – lonely and diverse at the same time. Playing their silent role they attach sense to the creation of the game, which has its rules. The rules, however, don’t disturb the total chaos. I try to put the chaos in order. I ask dummies to help me. There is silence. The rehearsal continues. Real faces are still replaced by dummies. They obey the non-existing laws. The reality itself is replaced by shades with windows. The dummies are not women. They personify all the human beings. They are manly stately and womanly weak. They symbolize the human beings on the whole – women, men, the life, its absence and myself. They are just some vertical lines, which have occupied our horizontal world. The world that is divided in two – the
The billiard table often turns into a field where single combats take place and where the billiard cue is the main weapon. They are not “bloody” – these combats, they just demonstrate everlasting opposition of discussion atmosphere, which keeps stable the balance of existence much stronger than the stagnant marsh silence. An egg appears often as symbol of discord, as an enigma, as a mysterious embryo, which suffocates in shell and is eagerly straining to the light.
What is the billiard if not a symbol of temporal and special extent of life. The billiard balls symbolize impersonality of dummies that live beneath the skyline. The field is green, as green as the land. And the same … the same rehearsal, but this time not with dummies, they have given up their place to the balls, even more spiritless than the dummies are. And here, on this green field we see the action. The everlasting heat of the toy battle has provoked it. And in this artificial world of restraint and
The quantity of accessories that the artist operates with is rather limited: dummies, pointed cups, turbans, ornamental clothes and curtains, lances, metal armor, easels, flowers, eggs – all these objects compose the strange and extraordinary world of Armen Gevorkian.
Armen is one of those artists who breaks fully formed stereotype of “Armenian” multi-colored painting. Without showing a preference for any kind of color thinking, it is desirable that one should realize and accept the natural physiological origin of each creative person. Armen doesn’t work for so-called elite, for a limited
HENRIK IGITIYAN |
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