GAREN ANDREASSIAN AND SAMUEL BAGHDASSARIAN
TWO ARMENIAN ARTISTS

Luciano CARAMEL

We should think of them as two artists that happen to be Armenian rather than two Armenian artists. Whilst affirming their cultural and national identity, the emphasis is on their being artists above all. It is for this that their country chose them to represent it in the centenary Venice Biennial Exhibition. The fact of their being Armenian is a peculiar and not uninfluential feature of their work, however what is of importance is that their work merits such limelight. Due to their originality Andreassian and Baghdassarian quite rightly make up part of the international art scene, which is today, by necessity osmotic, an array of wavelengths full of interference and characterized by different roots. However one should not take these roots as a starting point to understand and evaluate their work, which if of worth, is not so because it serves as a testimony of something else. Art is not and cannot be mere recording. The possible mirroring of heteronymous elements cannot compromise the essential autonomy of the work of art, which without doubt can be nourished by all things but must go beyond their objective soundness through metaphors, through invention, and through individual intervention. Otherwise one would be faced with passive mirroring and chronicling in a substantial representation of existence even when one might wish to contradict or deny it.

Such a stance is necessary in order that the results of the artists' research is approached by the visitor in the correct way; that is to say one should avoid conceiving it solely as the representation of the uniqueness of the Armenian people and its tormented history which continues to this present day. Baghdassarian appropriately affirms in the text accompanying the work: “Above all the relationship between nature and my work, between national culture and history are quite unconscious. Allusions to Armenian national culture are quite secondary, a bi-product resulting from my background. My intentions go beyond this”. It is something with which Andreassian would agree, even if he is more directly involved in ideological and political issues. In the installation setup for this occasion Reality, Process, Control as with all of his works the enquiry into connections is in the foreground: between what is objective and what is subjective, what is external and what is internal (and exactly as with this work, in the existing spatial dislocation.) Critical inquiry, free of preconceptions pivots on processes of communication, through which deductive certainties become unsound. A definite answer is not expected. The reality, which we experience, is dynamic to the extent of being impregnable. As an object it is a cubical structure consisting of metal tubes: the standard bearing the symbols of the Cross and the Red Crescent, the other elements are joined together casually and provisionally on or off-screen. However it is also that rectify which we are shown electronically through video images that intercommunicate "Objective presences” (like Malevich's square and cross with the said emblems of the Cross and Red Crescent) or that transfer the material reality to the "immateriality” of the signals on the photo-electric screen. So an extended and poly-dimensional process (also insofar as its cognitive functioning) comes into being in an interrelation inextricable from various codes thus affecting the quality of perception. In this installation, as it has been in others, control is brought to light, itself being something to be verified, not to invalidate it but to realize its possibility here and now.

Moreover, Andreassian refers back to ideas clarified by the Dadaists and Surrealists (from Duchamp and Breton) through to Malevich, Beuys and Kosuth, which go against an interpretation that relates chiefly to the subject matter. In addition to this all of his work through the years pays attention to the deconstruction and modification of the word and to verb-iconic and multi media elaborations. This having been said, this does not mean that his undertaking is strictly self-reflective; that everything is developed within the limits of language. The “autonomy” of art mentioned earlier is anything other than impervious since there is the question of peculiarity: its presence in the shaping of the work can be important, however the work of art to be of worth must go beyond this functional aim. All of this is relevant to Andreassian, who is of course sensitive to his belonging to his land, both with heart and mind, however, he has been moved by something greater: the “universal.”

Baghdassarian’s installation too has great conceptual value, underlining the impatience of the material itself and the impact it has on the senses. The fascination of the work is in its slow nearly geological rhythms; in what is clear and what is mysterious; in the movement and mutation of the very interior of the small, dark mounds of iron filings placed on the ground. Moved along programmed routes by magnetic fields, they represent an endogenous energy through their continual metamorphoses that suggest primordial emotions. It is as if we are experiencing telluric, volcanic and seismic phenomena at the same time. Rather different from the effects of solfatara, mud volcanoes, bubbling lava or even land-slips, the effects of these little mountains of metallic dust ere of an artificiality filled with metaphors suggestive to both the conscious and the subconscious in this recreation of a natural scene.

On a mental and emotive level such images are reflected in the artist who gives testimony to them, underlining that "this work is the result of a lasting interest in the properties of metal.” With a preference for iron “for its adaptability” and “in this case” he confirms that he was “drown by the less obvious and more enigmatic aspects” of this material: it was “its dust or its 'dust form', the humble remains of work in metal that awakened in me a series of memories that helped to distance me from the principal needs, thus enriching my work.” Also amongst these "the rock-forms of Armenia, the 'Navel Rock' the 'Dragon Rocks' and the 'Mill-Stones', whether sculpted and polished by man or by nature”.

The “principal needs” remain on another level: that of the manipulation of the materials (Baghdassarian used to work with ceramics and is familiar with manual dexterity). The manual element however does not serve as an end in itself but rather leads to the “recognition and explanation of things, taking into account the importance of the present.” Here the continual transformation of the subjects of his installations becomes apparent: they are different every time yet maintain their integrity as in preceding works such as the assembly of old disused musical instruments or another consisting of old public telephones. Nevertheless, if these works are ostensibly static in themselves (connoting the metaphysical and the archeological), this new work has undertones that would deny a solely external appreciation, that take the spectator to a profound level, to that of the pre object, to that of an elementarily and therefore broadly energetic metamorphosis.