Gagik Vardanyan / Gago
One artist, many paths
Peter Frank – 2019
Artists cannot help but perpetuate stylistic quirks peculiar to them. We suppose that such quirks define style. As art of the last half-century proposes, however, such quirks do not define style, because those quirks are natural while “style,” by contrast, is self-consciously cultivated. Rather, such quirks define sensibility, manifesting through (rather than as) manner the artist’s responsive biases and deeply rooted habits. Over the past century or so, the confusion of style and sensibility has fed an art market dependent on brand. A Warhol is a Warhol, says the market, because it looks like one and/or is credibly authenticated. But even in Warhol, sensibility subtly subverts style. In artists such as Beuys and Richter, sensibility insists on coming to the fore; the look of things is knowingly inconsistent, even while the philosophies that undergird those things are consistent, or at least stable.
Like Beuys and Richter, Gagik Vardanyan, aka GaGo, works from sensibility to style. Or styles. The range of styles comprising GaGo’s oeuvre results from an expansive, aesthetically motivated heart and mind, and from the various experiences that have stimulated that heart and mind. GaGo is consistent in his preference for painting and drawing media, but that is where his allegiance to a standard “look” ends. He works simultaneously on and in several modalities at once. These modalities share common characteristics — painterly touch, for instance, or a command of color superposition — but they do not resemble one another, either substantially or superficially. Each group of work evolves on its own, beginning and ending an arc of development more or less independent of any other group and any other arc.
GaGo merits our respect only secondarily for his multi-tiered pursuit of possibilities in painting and drawing. The primary reason for giving his work our attention is the near-virtuosic confidence he exercises in the realization of any and all his modalities. He develops motifs through open-ended but carefully modulated elaboration, producing not just variations on a theme, but variations on multiple themes. Some of his modalities in fact comprise so many sub-modalities. GaGo can speak at any given moment with several voices — and each of those voices is constantly mutating, evolving, seeking resolution or at least the gentle abandonment of a sufficiently mined idea. GaGo works as if he were several artists. Certain of those artists occasionally seem to be looking over the shoulders of others, but each explores and evolves autonomously.
It is a challenge for us to grasp, much less accept, this kind of multi-tiered artistic personality. We joke about the one-man group show, but that’s exactly what this is, an artist allowing himself access to all, or at least many, of the artists within him. GaGO’s pursuit of this variety, like Beuys’ and RIchter’s and, most famously, Picasso’s, is no parlor trick, and it certainly does not conform itself to the brand purity expected, even enforced, by the larger art world. But GaGo does not paint to satisfy expectations, he paints to satisfy urgent visions and pressing needs, even when fulfilling religious commissions in his most placid, historicized manner. He paints as deftly and as lucidly as possible in all cases, so as to earn the respect of the audience no matter whether his imagery is figurative or abstract, his touch opaque or translucent, his compositions open or dense, his palette luminous or somber, his line rhythmic or wandering.
There are certain factors that occur consistently across GaGo’s modalities — the brittleness of his line, for instance, or the relatively muted quality of his color. His richly painted, expressionistic figures display these characteristics as readily as do his scraped, etched grids, or his muscular scalloped abstract expressionist forms. He is a mark-maker, relying throughout on a line that binds things together even as it describes those things. Shapes for GaGo are more than mere contours, but their edges are always forcefully inscribed.
But GaGo’s groups of work do not otherwise overlap. In one group he formulates things almost geometrically, while in another he practices a gentle, almost naive kind of surrealism. Comparing the richly painted portraits with the grid paintings is like comparing Soutine with Agnes Martin. The examples of so many earlier modernist and pre-modernist artists are evident enough, even across the gaps between modalities, but none prevails. In maintaining his variety GaGo is doggedly syncretic in his regard for potential and actual influences. The whole modernist adventure, you could argue, winds up manifested in his work. No wonder he needs to practice several styles at once: he feels several styles at once.
But, again, what is important here is the broad imagination, raw power, and easy self-assurance GaGo displays in whatever he does. For all the modalities he might manifest at any given time, he manifests nothing halfway, He does not simply try on styles like clothing; he embraces their very heart. Every one of the artists GaGo seems to be works with unyielding passion and focus. There is no absence or even fracturing of identity here; all this work is by the same hand — and the same heart and mind. GaGo is not unusual in having many artists inside him; he is unusual in letting so many of them out, and regarding them all as equally authentic.
Los Angeles, CA
May 2019
Peter Frank
PETER FRANK is Associate Editor of Fabrik Magazine. He has served as editor for many art publications. He has written criticism for many more, and has served as art critic at the LA Weekly, Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, and other general periodicals. He has written several books and numerous catalogs. As curator, Frank has organized exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, at such venues as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museo Reina Sofia, the Biennale de Venezia, documenta, and the Laguna Art Museum.
Gagik Vardanyan
Adriana Laurenzi. Professor of Art History at the University of Buenos Aires. He is a professor at IUNA, and at the Universidad del Salvador in Art History. Researcher and critic specialized in Argentine art.
The precise and impeccable technical mastery of both drawing and color allows Gagik to obtain a formal result, whose images seem to emerge from his palette with ease, as if the act of painting did not impose any difficulty on him. The characters star in scenes in which he articulates close-ups with complex and highly elaborate architectural backgrounds. Despite being definitely figurative, characters and scenes bear no relation to the real world, which is why his compositions resemble the lyrical and poetic world of Marc Chagall more than surrealism. With a heraldic and classical presence, his women are both delicate and subtle sensuality. Gago’s dream scenes, with their cabalistic fetishes and hermetic emblems, do not always belong in an ideal world of fairy tales. His figures do not respond submissively to the established social order. His iconography, the spaces in which his figures are displayed and his singular way of narrating, seem predestined for mural painting. The true artist is subject only to his own internal needs, as Kandinsky pointed out. Art can be an instrument capable of conjuring pain and it was pain that made Gago abandon the soft textures of his lyrical compositions towards an expressionism that allowed him to express the inexpressible, with the mastery that reminds us of Kokoska or Giacometti, always being faithful to himself, being able to compare his versatility with that of those voices endowed with a wide and virtuoso musical register.
Rhizome (rizoma) in art
Rhizome is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972–1980) project.
Deleuze and Guattari use the terms “rhizome” and “rhizomatic” to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. In A Thousand Plateaus, they oppose it to an arborescent (hierarchic, tree-like) conception of knowledge, which works with dualist categories and binary choices. A rhizome works with planar and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections. Their use of the “orchid and the wasp” is taken from the biological concept of mutualism, in which two different species interact together to form a multiplicity (i.e. a unity that is multiple in itself). Hybridization or horizontal gene transfer would also be good illustrations.
“As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the original source of ‘things’ and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those ‘things.’ A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterized by ‘ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.’ Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a ‘rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.’ The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favoring a nomadic system of growth and propagation.
The concept of rhizome in every artistic discipline destroys all belonging to “isms”, traditions, religions, and cultures that make the failed and pitiful armor that protects the ego of the artist. This armor that stiffens and hinders movements that should naturally be fluid and plastic tries to resist the traversing and knotting of “affects” and influences to which we are constantly exposed, with the sole purpose of protecting and safeguarding the values and ideals of the supposed artist.
The more the changes and the crossings of conflictive thoughts and expositions, the harder and more rigid the armor, the more clumsy and blind the movements of the artist that little by little stops thinking/feeling everything that is happening to him, and his only act goes to ensure that the armor remains intact, this movement, which has as a consequence the gradual and indefectible death of the subjectivity of the artist. And as another comic and paradoxical consequence, the subject and the armor exchange their roles, is that now it is the subject who receives the blows and flagella with the objective that the armor remains intact.
A short explanation regarding the artistic creative process:
Sigmund Freud believed that sublimation was a sign of maturity and civilization, allowing people to function normally in culturally acceptable ways. He defined sublimation as the process of deflecting sexual instincts into acts of higher social valuation, being “an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an “important” part in civilized life.
So, understanding the concept of “sublimation”, as an artist I refer to a person with passions/drive/instincts that must be sublimated to generate art. This is the creative and instituting force that arises from aggressive and sexual passions.
Rhizome is an anti-ego movement since it confronts the subject with the indefectible fact that once the passion sublimated in any artistic expression is externalized, it ignores its “creator” and becomes an entity that generates subjectivity while being affected and valued by different subjectivities. In this instance, the artist has no power or ability to dictate what is going to produce the product, there is no way to control the (active) observer. I say anti-ego because, despite the values and ideals that each individual has, the artistic creation must only respond to the conflicting passions that arise sublimated and become the new sexual act of the artist.
What happens when the work arises in order to please, surprise, or generate any effect on the observer? This does not respond to any original creative process, but to strengthen the ego. There is no passion that is satisfied, but a narcissistic strengthening. It is for this reason that the concept of Rhizome, far from being a temporary concept and applicable only to explain paradigmatic changes, is a concept that explains the instant of artistic creation. Since your conscience and values have to cease to be the root and the commander who directs your work and surrender to the surprises that may cross the path, without any priority other than to satisfy that creative need.
We can at the same time be based on physics and chemistry when we talk about Rhizome. We are open systems, we breathe and we take from the outside what we need, and externalize other products. We are in constant interaction with the environment. We modify it and it modifies us. And this happens constantly, there is no way to stop it. Even after our organic death, this process keeps working. Having this clear, how logical it is to assert that some movement or culture has more value or legitimacy than another? This type of thoughts, like, all past time was better, does nothing but build higher walls around us to protect us in our comfort zone. The absurdity arises when we think of those people who inspire us from those past times. Leonardo Da Vinci, Miguel Angelo, Rafael, Donatello, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, Mahler, etc… are part of a list of characters that stood out in a particular philosophical and social paradigm. They were living and breathing in that specific environment. Does it have any reason to try to imitate them? If these characters lived now, would they continue to produce pieces in the same style that they had centuries ago? Or rather their product would correspond to the times and the system in which they are now immersed.
Tigran Vardanyan -Lic. In psychology and MA in Marriage and Family Therapy Psychotherapist
Artist of Editor’s Choice
Prof. Gagik Vardanyan
by Tamara Hovhannisyan, PhD.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.