ACCEA EXHIBIT SEEKS TO EMANCIPATE "ART FROM INTELLECTUALIZATION"
Arthur Sarkissian

Armenian Reporter

October 20, 2008
Armenia

Features cutting-edge work by three generations of artists

Yerevan – Promoting "unadulterated artistic expression" was the
goal of a recent month-long exhibition at the Armenian Center for
Contemporary Experimental Art (ACCEA) in Yerevan.

Curator Sonia Balassanian, founder and senior artistic director of the
ACCEA, says she "invited artists to try to create art stemming from
their very personal feelings and experiences, rather than following
‘common knowledge’ and socially accepted paradigms."

What resulted was "Undercurrent Shifts," this year’s group exhibition
of contemporary art at the ACCEA. Balassanian has been organizing
and curating similar shows annually in Armenia since 1992.

Presented to the public were a wide range of media: painting,
sculpture, installation, video art, performance, and combinations of
two or more.

Balassanian says the exhibition was multilayered and rich, with many
latent and overt parables and metaphors.

According to the curator, some of the works were "introverted" or
autobiographical stories dealing with personal issues and private
feelings and preferences. Other works focused on larger issues of
global significance.

"Artists are assumed to reflect upon their inner feelings and
first-hand experiences in a direct and unsolicited manner, without
external influences," Balassanian says. "However, this is not always
the case. There are many ‘external’ elements which consciously or
subconsciously impact on artists’ work."

Religion and politics are two examples, according to Balassanian,
that tend to place restrictions, "moral or otherwise," on people’s
behavior and modes of social interaction.

"Mass media and propaganda machines are geared to disseminating
and imposing set visions of the world," she says. "As a result,
an individual member of society, who may be of a different creed or
conviction, is forced to endure hardship imposed on him by standards
and mores which are not necessarily of his choice, preference,
personal belief, or code of ethics."

In "Undercurrent Shifts," the audience saw the concept
of self-sacrifice versus selfish posture of sacrificing others,
rebellious outburst versus psychology of sheepish obedience

Teni Vartanyan, an accomplished painter, was one of the participating
artists. Her installation was a huge structure covered with withered
flowers collected from tombstones. A distorted video projection
depicted the process of collecting the flowers. To some who saw the
work, the work conveyed the sad feeling of futility and never-to-return
bygones.

Balassanian also participated in the exhibition, with a mixed-media
installation. Seven glittering bronze casts of heads of sacrificed
lambs were installed on walls, and small-screen video projections
continuously showed moving and mooing herds of cattle and flocks
of lambs.

For the artist, her installation symbolizes warship and sacrifice,
as well as a sense of helplessness. Balassanian draws parallel with
the Golden Lamb from Greek mythology and its symbolism of woe,
heartache, and murderous vengeance exacted by mindless leaders,
while their flocks obediently follow and submit to destiny.

The exhibition’s "extrovert" works reflected upon soft and hard
sociopolitical and environmental issues which grind on artists’
psyches. Subjects included economic inequity and freedom of expression
and association.

Arthur Sarkissian’s work, "Closed Session," consisted of a row of
seven chairs, each sitting on four lit light bulbs. Balassanian says
Sarkissian’s work is a satirical reference to self-aggrandizing
decision-makers, detached from the citizens for whom they make
decisions.

Artists David Kareyan and Diana Hagopian, a couple that creates
joint installations, presented a mud-covered wall with two peepholes,
which a viewer would have to bend down to see through. Behind each
hole was a television screen that played an image of a woman and
a child at play, respectively. Next to the wall were several muddy
women’s evening gowns swinging gently from clothes-hangers.

Two of the younger-generation artists, Tigran Arakelyan, 16, and Sargis
Hovhannisyan, 22, offered a structure made from drinking straws. It
resembled a husky but totally transparent and lightweight mass,
perhaps a man, standing in the middle of the gallery.

Hovhannisyan presented a number of miniature cardboard cutouts of
various size squares, representing windows that were spread on the
floor in a corner of the exhibition space. Cardboard figurines and
objects popped out of these windows.

Balassanian says she brought together three generations of contemporary
artists for this exhibition. She explains that, since 1992, the
ACCEA’s group shows have featured more-experienced and established
as well as young and up-and-coming artists. The center’s goal is to
facilitate transfer of skill, experience, and mastery to the young
artists, without inhibition or the stigma of teacher-student or
master-disciple relationships.