Vahagn Ghukasyan’s exhibit titled “Children of the Variegated Colors” will open at Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art on March 22 to offer the audience a renewed opportunity to treat painting as an autonomous art and re-experience the history of painting through the artistic biography of an artist.
The project of “Children of the Variegated Colors” is composed of two series of paintings: the “Reign of Flowers” and “The Studio of Colors”. “The Reign of Flowers” is composed of eight paintings, five of which depict flowers on the overall surface of the canvas. The remaining three are portraits where flowers continue playing prominent semantic and visual role. The paintings which depict only flowers take us to the world of classics of Armenian modern painting, from Martiros Saryan’s flowery paintings to Vigen Tadevosyan’s abstract compositions.
The series of paintings called “Studio of Colors” is composed of fifteen paintings which demonstrate the tools of traditional methods of painting: easel, canvas, palette, brushes, paints, etc, from various views. A studio which looks at itself. Painting materials on the floor look at the canvases placed on easels and hanging on the walls, and vice-versa, canvases placed on easels and hanging on the wall look at the paints and brushes on the floor and chairs. All of these are depicted in contrasts and rhythms, amid light and colors.
“The Children of Variegated Colors” is an artistic monologue recited in the indifferent clamor of the present and the watchful silence of the future.
