Crosses + Icons: Celebrating Spirituality
29 September 2011
The art of the past is the foundation of the present, and the art of today is itself the foundation of tomorrow's artistic creations; it deserves to be seen on its own terms in the time it was created. —Vicki Hovanessian
Free and open to the public
|
Saturday October 29, 12 to 7 p.m.
Opening reception:
Saturday, October 29, 4:30 to 7 p.m.
Selected works by Sarkis Hamalbashyan, Hamlet Hovsepyan, Mariam Khachatryan (Moko) and Ararat Sarkissian
Crosses and icons as powerful metaphors of our transient, material bodies connect us to our immaterial, spiritual selves. Presented by the Women's Guild Central Council of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), Crosses + Icons: Celebrating Spirituality is a group art exhibition that will be held on October 29 at the Gulbenkian Hall of the St. Vartan Cathedral complex in New York City.
As the title of the exhibition indicates, works by the above four established artists based in Yerevan address an extensive and rich range of representations of the concept of spirituality through religious, collective and individual symbols, icons and approaches. The exhibition will present paintings and several newly invented mediums that reveal superbly original, cutting-edge means of artmaking, all of which skillfully resist technological reproduction.
History is a powerful presence in the paintings and other artworks of Ararat Sarkissian. Sarkissian's vast output includes depictions of the Armenian alphabetical characters produced in a cycle of unique prints made of embossed handmade paper in conjunction with the medium of oil. In his Yerevan studio, Sarkissian painstakingly simulates two-dimensional khatchkars as historical memories of recently eradicated tombstones of our ancestors, such as those insensitively abolished in the ancient Armenian cemetery of Jugha in 2005. As Sona Hamalian indicates, "much of Ararat Sarkissian's art reflects a lifelong fascination with signs, khatchkars, crosses and icons. It's a fascination that goes to the heart of symbol-making and recording history—its mechanics, cultural underpinnings and evolution across the ages." The numerous mediums that Sarkissian ingeniously re-invents reveal a relentless urge and rare commitment to the field of visual representation that is at once Armenian and universal.
A series of paintings by Sarkis Hamalbashyan reach back to the icons of medieval manuscripts. These images are replete with references to a broad range of Western art-historical masterpieces as well, evoking the figures of Velasquez with the intense, bold, highly colorful and expressionistic signature of German Expressionism of the twentieth century. In a suite of paintings, Hamalbashyan tackles the Armenian pair of a man and a woman enveloped in their traditional garbs, creating fascinating images as paradigms of an Armenian fauvism. In another painting, Hamalbashyan transforms an ordinary, everyday genre scene of a person having a meal into a chromatically powerful picture that absorbs the spectator into an undefinable time and place. Through his "primitivistic" style, both his domestic scenes and religious icons reveal the boundless power of painting. These highly engaging figures are replete with references to such Armenian masters as Martiros Saryan and Minas Avetisyan. Hence Hamalbashyan constructs a postmodern language where histories richly pile up and traditions are continually renewed.
With strong graphic lines and layers of paint, Mariam Khachatryan (Moko) creates paintings that splendidly echo opulent Gothic stained glass windows. A close look at Moko's paintings reveals intense gestural engagements, whereby surfaces at once contain controlled, angular and geometric lines in the company of loose, painterly brushstrokes. As this duality connects her work to aspects of Cubism, Constructivism, and Abstract Expressionism, it gives rise to a distinct direction of postmodern abstraction. In Moko's compositions, line functions not as mere support; it is design with its own values. Such lines forcefully constitute forms that sing their own songs. Light and darkness in these paintings are optical forms of voice and silence, of spirit and body. In this manner, Moko reveals the endlessness of originality insofar as the hand and eye collaborate to experiment, explore, mark, erase and re-mark the surface of the canvas. This labor of love of Moko compellingly bridges the gaps between the artist, paint and beholder.
The viscous physicality present in the gestures of the oil paintings of Hamlet Hovsepian translates as allegory of the pictorial narratives of Genesis—the Creation of the Universe, Earth and Life... In these pictures space and matter are given rise through ongoing coloristic dialogues. Brushstrokes—broad, narrow, curvular, diagonal, vertical and horizontal—culminate in dramatic spaces that at times suggest landscapes while at other times reveal pure forms in vacant, spiritual spaces. From what seems to be eruptive graffiti marks that indicate a form of obsessive tracing of the artist's hand emerges an aesthetic sensibility that can be summed up as surreal elegance. This paradox is not only an aesthetic one but embodies the body-spirit duality. In this sense Hamlet Hovsepian's paintings reveal themselves as allegories of matter, space, body, spirit and transcendence.
By conflating archeology and contemporary creativity, Crosses + Icons: Celebrating Spirituality showcases works by some of the greatest contemporary artists to an Armenian-American audience as both a cerebral and spiritual celebration. The exhibition unwraps a riveting experience, as if it were a part of a journey to a virtual old and new Armenia—an affectionate, undying place, a beguiling motherland, a timeless fatherland, an exotic homeland, our marvelous soil.
The exhibition is curated by Vicki Hovanessian, Collector and Director of VH Contemporary Art, with the collaboration of Raphy Sarkissian, Faculty at the School of the Visual Arts, New York.
About The Women's Guild Central Council
The Women's Guild Central Council (WGCC)
was established in 1986, to serve as a coordinating, advising and communicating
body for the individual Women's Guilds which are an integral part of the life
of each parish in the Eastern Diocese.
The mission of the Women's Guild of the Armenian Church is to live and share the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ through worship, education, witness, service and fellowship as expressed in the distinctive faith-experience of the Armenian people. All women of the Armenian Church are called to participate fully in this mission.
Local parish guilds along with the WGCC sponsor a variety of national and international projects; among these are the annual Saintly Women's Day; the annual Women's Guild Assembly; educational and cultural activities; the Children of Armenia Sponsorship Program (CASP), which benefits orphans and needy children in the Republic of Armenia; and the Schoolbag Project for Armenian Children, which encourages Armenia's school-age children by providing them with book bags filled with basic school supplies and a children's Bible.
