Exhibition: 12 March – 10 April 2010
20 Hoxton Square Projects & Vito Schnabel are pleased to present Mr. Big Ben a show of new work by Vahakn Arslanian. On display will be the delicately rendered mixed-media pieces that comprise Arslanian’s unique vision. Almost entirely self-trained, Arslanian’s work has developed a following of dedicated supporters intrigued by his enigmatic approach to the production of art.
Mr. Big Ben represents a new direction for the artist whilst at the same time building upon established themes. Arslanian’s fascination with distinctive iconography, such as candles, birds, subway trains and planes, is here displayed as savagely beautiful markings on layered paper collages set into discarded window frames worked with glass fractions and solder. Often the picture surface itself is burned, branding the piece with evocative marks of decay and ruin. Through this enigmatic visual language the mundane is transformed into the uncanny. A sparrow is perched on a branch. A candle is burning its paper. We immediately recognize these subjects from our daily lives, but the understanding we apply is suddenly stretched and distorted by Arslanian’s surrealist logic. Deaf since birth and a true outsider in his artistry, Arslanian shows us an impossible view into a world of silent obsessions.
Since childhood Arslanian has displayed a propensity towards destructiveness, shattering glass objects and clay pots and shredding other materials. The works in Mr. Big Ben, fashioned using the resulting damaged materials alongside found objects, articulate the logic behind these seemingly random acts of destruction. They exist at the intersection between the precious and the ruined, the created and the destroyed. From the broken fragments emerges something new and innocent, raising the archetypal to the status of the sacred. In the context of his work the act of demolition is wholly cathartic, part of the methodology of his art-practice and the means by which he constructs and communicates with the world.
Born in Belgium in 1975, Vahakn Arslanian now lives and works in New York. He has previously exhibited at Andrew Eldin Galley, New York, Maccarone Gallery, New York and in group shows and fairs around the world.
www.20hoxtonsquare.com
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