Testimonials

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, drastic changes took place in the history of ourvisual arts and in the culture in general. They were so fulminant, that even with hindsight it is difficult to give a full, objective explanation of what happened. To cut a longstory short, the changes eradicated the state-dictated idea of socialist realism.

The influence of people undeservedly occupying high positions such as professor,doctor, honored artist, laureate, academician etc came to an abrupt end without a”surgical intervention”.

They were not forced to resign and the new generation didn’t fight to replace them. Itall happened as a consequence of a natural process and the artistic field was purifiedby itself. The basic principles of official art financed by the government eventuallyceased to exist.

Big names disappeared. A few of the old generation’s masters remained, althoughmost of them were forgotten. Even our great maestro Yervand Kochar was buried inan ordinary cemetery and not in Pantheon, an eternal home for remarkable people.Academician Alikhanyan suffered the same fate, since authorities considered him adissident.

We were the only ones who remembered Karalyan, Jotto (Gevorg Gevorgyan), SedrakRashmajian, Petros Konturajian, Alexander Bashbeuk – Melikyan, Arutyun Kalents,Bardukh and Aramike. From our generation, artists such as Vruyr, AshotHovhannisyan, Martin Petrosian, Robert Elibekian, Henry Elibekian, Ruben Adalian,Gayane Khachaturian and Rudolf Khachatryan who had been not welcome – got agreen light. Their works survived thanks to the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Almost all the representatives of the previous generation passed away: Paruyr Sevak,Parajanov, Vruyr, Minas, Ashot Hovhannisyan, Musheg Galshoyan, VarosShakhmuradian, Seyran Khatlamajian, Hrant Matevosian and Ashot Bayandur. Thelast of our people to remain were Rudolph Khachatryan and Agasi Ayvazyan.

When the next generation of artists emerged, some of them took on the newly developing tendency of the so-called “fantastic realism”, a way that gave more or less tangible a profit. Others turned to primitive modernism. What can be more vulgar in artthan unrecognised provincial modernism? For this matter Kandinsky once noted thatif a monkey is holding a book, it doesn’t mean it can read it.

Only a small group of outstanding painters emerged from this new generation. One ofthem is Gagik Ghazanchyan.

Maestro Kochar frequently used a word “curiosite'”. This word could characterizeworks of artists who resort to outstanding ideas and controversial topics with a touchof adventurism. Obviously, this type of art has also the right to exist if it lives its ownlife and is devoid of imitation. Unfortunately, plagiarism flourishes today but for GagikGhazanchyan it doesn’t exist. He has found his own way which he follows slowly butsurely, and there is an unquestionable progress in his work.

Everything can be perceived by comparison. Recently in France I curated a groupexhibition of 35 Armenian artists living in their homeland and abroad. Whether Ishowed the whole collection or just a part of it, Gagik’s canvases assumed their ownplace in the exposition in a very natural way.

To explain this phenomenon, I would refer to the idea of a”reliable player”. In thesport terms, it means a player you can trust with your eyes closed. Gagik is a reliableplayer in our contemporary art. His works carve a specific niche in many collections.His art doesn’t narrate or strive for a literary effect, but is peculiar, akin to those, whovalue art for itself. Neither sudden impulsiveness, nor stunning flights of fancy can beobserved in his art. He is a self-sufficient person, who has felt no need to surprise withoutward effects and innovative tricks. He follows his own route without hustle andbustle.

I sympathise with those painters who didn’t abandon the country when given anopportunity. Faced with a chance to search for a better life, they stayed and managedto create normal conditions for work in their homeland. Only a few exceptionalArmenians managed to establish themselves as artists abroad.

As for Gagik Ghazanchian, there isn’t a better place than Armenia. In his recent works,more liberty and independence can be seen. They have become even fuller of sound.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for artists to envy one another. Gagik however isalways sincerely happy for his colleagues’ successes, which speaks high of his innerqualities.

More than two thousand people in contemporary Armenia are engaged in visual arts,and hardly thirty of them deserve to be labelled genuine painters. Gagik Ghazanchianis definitely one of them.

When the Museum of Contemporary Art was established on July 8 1972, there wasno jury. However, I don’t know an artist whose works deserve to be exhibited, but werenot included in the collection for some reason. I am strict and unbiased when it comesto choosing works for an exhibition. I have good friends whose canvases have notbeen displayed in the Museum, and I barely know some artists exhibited there. Theexhibitions reflect my genuine view and I don’t aspire to be the highest instance ofabsolute truth. On the contrary, I would welcome people dissenting it and wishing toopen a new gallery with works of artists I chose not to exhibit.

Currently, I am preparing the first part of a book on the history of the ContemporaryArt Museum. This is a history of our battle for its establishment. In the book, I amgoing to include artworks of a few painters from our generation who were not includedin the collection of the Museum, mainly for space reasons.

Recently, Akob Akobyan and his wife Mary presented their best works to the museum.I believe it is a concept of existence and development of the Museum. By the way, theCentre Pompidou in Paris has been replenished in the same way.

Unfortunately, visual arts sadly do not rank high on our current government’s agenda.I attribute this policy to the lack of understanding. Otherwise we would have had asplendid museum building by now.

We are responsible for the establishment of the Museum of Contemporary Art in theSoviet Union and the satellite countries. It survived like a bastion of our victory andindependence. How come then that an independent country dotted with new avenues,fine hotels, restaurants and a booming tourism industry doesn’t have a decent building that would host the Museum of Contemporary Art with its extensive collection ofthe best Armenian painters of every generation? I wish we would live to that day.

Henry Igityan
Founder and Director
of the Museum of the Modern Art

PRISON TO THE EMPEROR, WINGS TO THE ARTIST

In Gagik Ghazanchyan’s paintings the viewer is continuously confronted with a stereotypical structure of the canvas, and its constituent elements, the background and thefigure are in contrast with each other. The background represents a collage that hasits origins in photography. It embraces the elements of downtown districts of high-risebuildings often to be seen in contemporary American megalopolises that had come toreplace medieval cities. In contrast with the background, the third element evolvingin the foreground is nothing else than a color composition expressing motion which issometimes semi-figurative and sometimes a completely abstract play of artistic creativity.

Is this stereotypical construction of the surface of the painting a reflection of artisticrigidity or does it refer to the stereotypical character of contemporary urbanism? Onthe one hand, we have the standardization of our environment resulting from theassembly-line principle, which brings forth the material-objective aspects of things:material, color, form and size. One the other hand, the artistic flexibility of the contemporary individual helps to counter-react against these transformations that have created the imperative to transform one’s whole life into a permanent performance.

Multiplication of the secondary qualities of the hand-made environment has reacheda point that now it conceals the primary and functional aspects of the objects we produce. These material and formal transformations leading towards dematerializationand production of signs, which Baudrilliard back in 1970s defined as a tendency within the system of objects, have turned into the signifiers of the world order in our eraof globalization.

All contemporary movements, be social and political, cultural and technological,unequivocally refer to this invisible and transparent order. But it is precisely the orderwhich demands artistic virtuosity from all movements and gestures. Without this skillit has become impossible to realize the permanent human striving towards freedom,such as the construction of signs of the new world order, for instance the twin towersof the World Trade Center or the terrorist attack that brought them down onSeptember 11, 2001.

Therefore, the artistic virtuosity is what describes Ghazanchyan’s art. The brushstrokes are applied to the panoramas of megalopolises, thus partially destroying theimage of the contemporary world based on materialistic values. Nevertheless, thesecannot exist without each other, the very same way as no brush stroke can do withoutthe canvas. However, in this case the paradox which lies at the foundation of thismanner, not only has its origins in ontology, but also reflects the paradox between theartist’s emotions and his global point of view. On the one hand it is fed by the artist’sbelief in progress and its empowering potential, and on the other it reflects the disillusionment which he often feels when confronted with its aftermaths.

Gagik Ghazanchyan’s manner is not only a carrier of the contradictions between hisideological positions and emotional peregrinations, but it also opens up paths for itsresolution. These are paths which contaminate the blurry outlines of love scenes witha boundless play of color that the artist discovers through the intertwining or the illumination of the bodies. These drives, both erotic and mystical in their content, suggest two vectors of motion: the horizontal one, which is embrace and assimilation withthe sex partner, a living creature, magnetic tools or a two-wheel bicycle, and the vertical one, which are transubstantiation and ascension.

One of the protagonists of the ancient Greek mythology, constructor and architectDaedalus who was also the first sculptor, is known to us for three works: the MinoanLabyrinth commissioned by the king of Crete, the wooden statute of the cow for hiswife Pasiphae to ‘alleviate’ her sexual desire for a snow white bull from her husband’sherd, inflamed in her by Poseidon as punishment. His third work was the wings he created to realize his own striving towards freedom. The prison-palace is then for theKing, the wooden love tool for his wife, and the wings of freedom for the artist.

These three forms in Gagik Ghazanchyan’s art act not only as spatial and formalplanes, but also as containing metaphors. If the first the Labyrinth is a metaphor oftoday’s world order, the second and third embody its opposite forces – love and freedom. As a result of the unification of these three, an indeterminate artistic pulsationemerges. This plastic pulsation conveys information beyond the painting: it is theartist’s anxiety that one day he, having been granted with freedom, might face a personal tragedy of loosing his beloved Icarus. It is precisely this pulsation that overcomes us when we are confronted with Ghazanchyan’s paintings.

Nazareth Karoyan
Art Critic

THE WORLD AS CONQEST AND TIME AS PASSION

My first acquaintance with his art was more than ten years ago. He came across asself-contained and impetuous at the same time. His artistic language seems to becomprehensible to me, as it belonged to the American tradition of the second half of20. century.

He considers culture as a significant part of existence and pursuits his path amid theimpulsive process of life motion with the inner resistance against immorality. Themoral space in his life is his world, his ideal and his servitude. With the desire ofbeing free from traditional stereotypes, he simultaneously finds commitment to thetraditions and is ready to fight anyone who dares to encroach upon them. He is awarrior in both cases. He is the warrior aware that the battle is essential not for victory or defeat, but for a strength test. As a true artist he has a huge advantage oversuperficial painters. The depth of his emotional search gives him privilege to talkabout the highest concepts concerning life.

The amplitude of this emotional search is impressive. It may piece together a pathetic gaze of a homeless puppy and a gloomily deep abyss in some odd megalopolis.He suffers from himself, from his own world which throws him into the whirlwind ofa troubling ripple. What is his message to us, his contemporaries? And what is thathe wants to tell the next generation of creators? Is it possible to outline a silhouetteof this dialogue, if there is one? These are not idle questions. These are basics forhis code of honor and masculinity, his inner pride, his confidence and doubts at thesame time. He is passionate while restrained, laconic but expressive, trustingalthough prudent, impetuous though self-contained, philanthropic and skeptical atthe same time. This set of qualities establishes his keen perception and analysis ofthe world inside his artistic doubts.

The temperament and human willpower manifest themselves in the colour qualitiesof the painter. His perception of the contemporary world has developed far awayfrom boundaries of mere national self-knowledge, in contrast to many timeserverpainters longing to sell and set their names in hardly established Armenian artmarket.

He is able to distinctly define problems of nowadays existence, as a man of 21. century. However, he can’t remain indifferent to the emotional experiences in his homecity. He belongs to this city and he can create poetry concerning the whole spectrumof its drama.

Painter Gagik Ghazanchyan is a focused vector towards the culture of the future. Iexpect much from his search. His potential as an artist allows a presumption that hisdestiny is a genuine way of suffering and deep deliberation, enlightenment and disillusionment.

Ruben Angaladyan
Writer, Culturologist

Is it possible that abstraction and figurativeness overlap? It would seem that GagikGhazanchyan marries the two and thus emphasising the transitory status of the image.Metamorphoses and effects of distortion in the same painting unfold in the course ofthe dialogue between the viewer and the painting. The painter puts a special emphasison the act of creating a canvas. He denies illustrative simplicity and trades it for illusory space. There is no search for the new, but for the vitally important and the spiritually inspired. He communicates his feelings and attitude to the environment througha specific technique which should be perceived as an element of his style and not onlyas a random portrayal of emotions. Gagik does not strip his art to a bare visual experience but evokes a whole spectrum of emotional peregrinations. Fragments of a city,figures of mighty animals, a multitude of points of view – all the images he uses reflecthis mercurial temperament and volcanic potential. The painter chooses deformedcontours are a base of his paintings. They are subsequently turned into dense, dynamic compositions applied with a diversity of impressive techniques. His worksresemble walls covered with graffiti, a happy confluence of art, nature and culture.This tempestuous wind is manifested with tangible joy of handling colours and creating shapes, and in an undifferentiated use of apparently incompatible stylistic means.

We tend to compare and contrast paradoxical pairs: modernism and realism, orabstraction and figurative art, and don’t even consider a space where the world of artcan no longer include the same components. In the paintings of Gagik Ghazanchyanthe idea of combining diverse influences occupies a vital position. At the same time,he remains sensitive to tradition and his time, which constitute his understanding ofpluralism in art. Ghazanchyan’s canvas invite the viewer to engage in and contributeto a fascinating adventure. This is indeed the art of metamorphoses and permanentchange. Nothing is set, everything is in flux, vibrates and twinkles, apart from a fewsolid details of the painting, clear lines or architectural forms that hold the composition together. In these canvas, like in a dream, the realm of real and illusory imagesis diluted. The space is a kind of an experimental field which entices the viewer withassociate allusions and impressions to continuously revise mechanical perceptionsand diagrams of ready-made thoughts, and where reality loses its uniform character.

In the paintings of Gagik Ghazanchyan one can feel a notorious lack of continuity typical for existence, secret symbolism, an unquestionable sense of humour concealingan underlying touch of cynicism, irony and sometimes even a tragedy.

Alain Navarra-Navassartian
Curator