Editor’s Choice

Times of Innocense – Prof. Hakob Soukiasian

It is one of our aims to constantly surprise you with global art treasures you may never have seen before. This is more easily done due to our 21 years in the art world.  This length of time in business has its advantages and disadvantages; we are fortunate to be more on the lucky side.  I guess you never stop learning or teaching, especially when you love what you do. I am a hopelessly obsessive collector.  I am in love, personally and professionally with the artists I represent.  I carry with me beautiful moments of interactions with them and with my readers, especially with those who share with us their love and appreciation for art but have never become active collectors. I have learned that art appreciation is a sign of finesse in one’s personality and we are fortunate enough to be surrounded with such a precious circle of human love. Art is the catalyst of it all.

Village Chapar – Hakob Soukiasian

Art is an excellent teacher of tolerance and love.  It brings the world to you with all its colors, smells, customs, and voices.  All you have to do is to have a willingness to relate to it all.  Since the world is now my source of professional inspiration, where there is no room for discrimination, let’s go to one of the oldest pockets of the world, Armenia. In fact, the timing is perfect, since the little country has recently been in the center of global attention finding ways to achieve a peaceful transition of power using love and respect in place of weapons.

From the world of expressionism, the next stop in our journey will be simplicity and idealism.  This was a period when life and relationships were simpler, and the world was like a warm enfolding blanket. Welcome to the world of Hakob Soukiasian.

Fresh Flat Bread – Hakob Soukiasian

Hakob Soukiasian is a native son of Armenia, a St. Petersburg prestigious academy graduate, and a professor, whom we lost recently.  His works have joined those of other creative sons and daughters of the small nation of Armenia in surprising major auction houses by registering high prices for their art sales.  Our current exhibition of his works at our Gallery is our farewell and homage to his legacy.

Hakob Soukiasian belongs to the generation that created heaviness in the elements of style-regime: poverty, simplicity, innocence, and abandonment as the result of being forgotten victims of cultural repression; those who somehow, with the grace of God, survived and ended up reconnecting themselves with themselves through the power of art.

Concept on The Pick – Hakob Soukiasian

If history and culture are the backbone of national identity, then the collected creativity of the nation is tomorrow’s certificate for eternity.  Soukiasian is a perfect example of the back and forth transfusion of love and creative energy between the motherland and its creative son.  In order to be able to connect emotionally and spiritually to his art one has to feel Armenian, see the colors of the land with closed eyes, have a memory of aromas of semi-nurtured part wheat, part cultured fields.

Soukiasian is considered one of the classics of the period. He was a quiet man, wrapped in his dreams, never sought recognition, never showed off in public festivities, as if he did not exist; yet, he knew that his existence would continue through his art, a form of cultural transcendence. One of his most famous students, Gevorg Yeghiazaryan described Soukiasian with a few simple words: “quiet, wise, and innocent, like a child.”

Village Aren – Hakob Soukiasian

The innocence and simplicity of Hakob Soukiasian’s fragments of forgotten times are creative flashbacks to his childhood.  Simple houses made out of stone, crafted and decorated from their immediate surroundings.  The houses, hills and landscapes depicted in his paintings are bare and simple, existing mostly to showcase human virtues.

Where there is not much of monetary value, the treasures of life come from romanticized moments: a rooster singing, two men fighting over the love of a woman, a young girl bringing water to her grandfather.  Moreover, robust and unfinished figures remind us of the roughness of life of that era.

The Tree – Hakob Soukiasian

Even though, throughout his lifetime, Soukiasian traveled to other countries and in other social circles, he forever remained committed to highlighting the building blocks of forgotten values and times of his beloved Armenia. His paintings are small in size, but the space they depict is large, encompassing hills, villages, and their inhabitants.  They are minimalistic blueprints of the symphony of existence of a nation that was hunted by the cruel developments of history but never lost the ability to dream, love, and create.

Soukiasian’s monumental works are also panoramas of life itself, combining nature and people, showing them in spiritual and physical unity, bringing everything together in an enormous harmonious acceptance in one canvas.  Soukiasian portraits: connections between people, early signs of blossoming love, unknowing attraction between love and shines of unity carrying unmistakable strokes of national character.

Mountain Spring – Hakob Soukiasian

Armenia is a land of ancient fairytales, biblical symbols, and mythical characters that look like the rocks.  Soukiasian’s ability to integrate the forgotten stories and national tales in one canvas, with all its compositional complexity and environmental colors, is a sign of the power of his undeniable command of brush and fundamental knowledge of regional history.  His characters are approachable, somewhat naive, minding their own business, not seeking attention. They carry the colors of the environment. There is a warmth in Soukiasian’s palette as if you could warm your face under the warmth of a late autumn sun, or wash your hands in flooding mountain springs.  His portraits and self-portraits carry the wisdom, modesty and hidden genius of the people of Armenia, as if the characters are looking at you through the windows of history, showing strength of character, kindness of heart and power of creating hands.

Soukiasian treasured everything that the land of Armenia offered, including the creative geniuses of the nation. No wonder his portraits of national icons, poets, musicians, depict in their background the country of Armenia, its dancing hills, occasional trees, abandoned castles, and semi-destroyed churches.  Soukiasian’s work carries the unmistakable palette of the country, the modesty of its people, and the simplicity of their life pleasures.

Spring is Here – Hakob Soukiasian

I was fortunate to have met him and shared a few precious memories with him.   It was then that I understood that I was going to be one of the voices of his creativity, that I wanted to use my words as a creative bridge to show that my art-loving roots are seeded in that land as well. I want to show that he and I have a common love for the land of Armenia and its creative miracles.

Hence, it is a moral obligation for me today, after so many years, to raise that voice and surprise the art-loving community with the beautiful innocence of forgotten times powerfully captured, simple on the surface yet complex compositionally, that show Soukasian’s love for Armenia.  A Country which is getting smaller and smaller every day demands great love from all sons and daughters of a historical nation.  In his art, Soukiasian paid back to the ailing land his dues of love and worship.

Eastern – Hakob Soukiasian

In Soukiasian’s Armenia, mountains are like people; they guard the history and longevity of an heroic nation. They safeguard the way young and old worship the sunrise, start a working day, peacefully welcome the end of a tiring day, relating to each other with the exchange of love, sharing the sparse offerings of the land showing the beauty of the nation, dreamy eyes, hidden shyness, high cheekbones, beautiful suntan skin, oversized working hands.

 

Mural – Hakob Soukiasian

Soukiasian’s works capture real life and give you a view through a window that leads you to that forgotten world; free, welcoming, simple, as if travelling through roads that lead you to the beginning of time, where you can find the reminders of heroic past, the shortcomings of an insecure present, and the anxiety of an uncertain future.

People rest, the smooth roads are their beds. Their midday lunch will be delivered to them from local villages. They will stay and guard their modest belongings: a few heads of cattle or a piece of land. Turns will be taken by families in the village baking Lavash (symbolic bread that Armenians can’t live without) to be shared among themselves.

Simple musical instruments made from the branches of apricot trees are soul-touching tools of communication borrowed from heaven.  The unusual sounds of those instruments that every village kid knows how to use, carry the voices of the past, the uncertainty of the present and the anxieties of the future, giving a sweet melancholy to their sound. One can dream under the melody, one can cry.

Throughout history, Armenians have learned how to coincide their laughter with their tears.  Soukiasian’s works symbolize, document and immortalize the spirit of a nation that is very strong yet fragile, very moral yet confused.  It has always carried the shadows of fear for its future.  It is a nation that has experienced enormous territorial losses, genocide, earthquakes, massive migrations yet is still able to use today’s pain to create hope for tomorrow.

We invite you to learn, enjoy, and love Soukiasian’s art works.  They will connect you with the historical, biblical nation of Armenia, the first nation that adopted Christianity; the first nation that spread its wings from sea to sea and then lost it without losing its kindness.  Yet, with its newly regained independence, it now has the destiny of a newborn.  There was a time of power, then, a time of repression and losses. But none of them were times of hopelessness, and the key of the rejuvenation of the national spirit was the creative power of the nation.

Some write their national history with wars and conquests. Soukiasian chose to exist and create.

Please enjoy the captive dreams of innocent times, purify your emotions in the remembrance of your childhood, reconnect your memory line to a possible instance in the memory of your own innocence. Be a child again by relating, enjoying and finding a refuge in the immortalized world of Hakob Soukiasian.

Tamara Hovhannisyan, PhD

Artist of Editor’s Choice

Prof. Gagik Vardanyan

by Tamara Hovhannisyan, PhD.

Prof. Gagik Vardanyan

Professor Gagik Vardanyan is a man whose extraordinary destiny stretches from ancient Armenia to passionate modern Argentina, as if the combination of the two cultural environments where necessary to completely recognize and appreciate his somewhat complex, deeply philosophical, and poetic creative journey.

One can always wonder how he ended up storing all this brilliant knowledge and understanding of human psyche, its ancient cultural achievements, its victories, and unbearable loses by just simply being an observant eye that immortalizes it all.

A Tale – Oil on Linen

He spent his early years, taking from a brutal environment, the best from a great nation’s historical past of which he is a son of

Prior to closing the door and leaving the country, he rescued the good, the kind, and the forgiving for which his nation was known.

At the time Armenia was bleeding intellectually, economically, and demagogically.  Armenia’s many sons and daughters found refuge in different pockets of the world where some became forgotten names, fruitless trees planted in somebody else’s soil.  But, that is not the case with Mr. Vardanyan.  He welcomed uncontrollable passion screaming emotional instabilities which became foundations in the Latino World that had adopted him, where he is now considered to have an instrumental part of a renaissance.

Sun Flower – Oil on Linen

Apparently quiet, gentle, always a great listener with encyclopedic knowledge about alpha and omega of art history.

Mr. Vardanyan is a precious professional that never strikes to find admiration and respect in the intense audience he deserves.  He is a surrealist that connects the past and the present with a future nobody has ever seen as if his brush is a traveler into waters of infinity.

Fortune has been kind and cruel to Mr. Vardanyan. He learned to be the bird that can fly with just one wing.

Destiny crucified him, brought him down from the cross, turned all the lights off and turned them back on, forcing him, many times, to be reborn from his own ashes.  He took all the misfortunes and loses that he experienced and synthesized them through his philosophical mind, creating a unique story of existence as a traveler of two sides of the world.  He is a wise witness and, the carrier of the strength and fragility of an artistic existence of the person who creates.

It is not easy to be a co-traveler of Mr. Vardanyan’s creative universe. He offers works for mature and sophisticated Collectors who are not afraid of life, who recognize the color of the other side of the so called post existence traveling, journey between existence and none…

As time goes by, fragmentary windows of his unusual creativity are ever changing discoveries, as if artist empties his memory packets from nostalgic burdens of the past to be able to enter in a new existential journey with the innocence of a child, wondering about everything where the spirit of the person has to be free and barefoot.

Gagik Vardanyan

The symbolism that he is using in his art works have a blend of new and old.  The viewer finds faces under the faces, words that have dual meanings, thoughts that are capable to bring unreal to reality, Angels with the eyes of ghosts, and wings with blood veins. There is an obvious new interpretation of a universal disconnect between the Biblical unity of man and woman (one pushes legend away, while the other recreates it by bringing it back in another form).

The classical, powerful training of Mr. Vardanyan does not stop him to travel into the woods of abstraction.   His powerful brush is sending broken characters into an endless transformational journey of the ocean of human imagination.  Mr. Vardanyan, just like powerful names of Surrealism (Salvador Dali, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and many others), is not afraid to use his brush to travel into the darkest corners of imagination, portraying the saint and evil in us. All in all, a journey well taken.

Gentleman – Oil on Linen

Professor Vardanyan is an artist that has no fear to swim in the water of all temperatures. Having an excellent command for all technical nuances of drawing and painting, his curious mind took him to challenge with fantastic realism, expressionism, surrealism, cubism, etc.  Saying that, he has excellent group of works that can be categorized under those movements letting the observant professional conclude that Mr. Vardanyan is a man of universal talent. He brings together all the best from anything his predecessors challenged and achieved. He creatively stands in a platform that is nothing but a blend of it all.

Dear Friends and Collectors be adventurous and somewhat a risk taker in collecting, after all human beings are wonders of the universe…  Stop searching all the time for something sweet in the fields of boring reality to find your fragment of the unusual.  Let us hand on hand travel into the creative universe of Gagik Vardanyan.  Surprising wonders are waiting there for all of us.

Collecting art is a journey in which we have to trust and learn from each other.  Let’s see what is out there.