The Week of Madness by Arshak Sarkissian

Painting/Drawing/Sculpture

The courage of Arshak the painter is featured in a renovated connection of the real and the fantastic, the human and the inhuman, the cultural and the savage. His drawings exhibit a complexity and subtlety that exceed imagination; he is one of the few artists capable of creating vast canvasses with multiple figures and complex structure. As a painter he is, at the same time, an anthropologist of states of mind. The artist often depicts animals along with his characters, a fact that also leaves room to physiognomic confusing interpretations.
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Besides paintings and graphic works, sculpture has also an important place in Arshak’s art. Arshak’s sculptures have “come out” from his paintings and graphic works, and they also need to be looked in a different way. For example, a unique character emerging from a graphic work may be transferred afterwards to painting and finally may become a sculpture. During these transformations, those characters become more vivid and alive because the subject is the secret of life, that life coming out of its own boundaries.

[...] I would like to call his sculptures “dimensional painting”. In his sculptures, Arshak remains a painter, which brings to mind Degas’ “Dancers”: Degas’ wonderful sculptures were the outcome of his desire to see his painted images in tangible form.

Arshak Sarkissian was born in Gyumri, Armenia in 1981. After completing his education at the National Aesthetic Center of Art in Armenia, he later took an art course under Stass Paraskos. Sarkissian has had solo shows at the Albemarle Gallery in London, Gavriel Gallery in Bremen, in Paris and New York. Among his works is the Interior design of passenger terminals in Zvartnots Armenia International Airport. He has participated in numerous art projects such as the Art Omi International Artist residency, in New York and “Stand Up For Your Rights” Design and Illustration Team Residence program in Buntingford, UK and the Andirran National Commission for UNESCO international art camp 2014. He works and lives in Yerevan, Armenia. This is his 4th one man show at Opus 39 Gallery.

The exhibition is supported by the Pharos Arts Foundation.

Opening on Monday, 29 September 2014 at 8.00 p.m.

Opening Hours
Monday: 17.00 - 20.00
Tuesday – Friday: 10.30 - 12.30 & 17.00 - 20.00
Saturday: 10.30 - 12.30