Social and spiritual transformation is at the heart of Vasken Matyan’s art. In his latest collection of paintings, exuberant color and innovative imagery provide the framework for his powerful critique of the state of the world, with a life-affirming subtext that strives for a heightened sense of awareness, and, ultimately, inner liberation.Architecture and architectonics are key aspects of Matyan’s art. This is because he levels his critique by focusing on structures and their function as organizing principles: the structures of the social grid, the edifices of the metropolis as well as the economic, political, and cultural underpinnings of empire and the consumerist ethos. Accordingly, geometric abstraction and constructivist forays are core esthetic strategies in Matyan’s paintings. The general effect is that of imposing constructs that elicit an immediate emotional response while force-opening the doors of perception and provoking thought. The peculiar urgency of these elements owes in no small measure to the artist’s meticulously controlled subversion of framework and form: his compositions communicate a profound sense of shatteredness and dislocation, yet also insist, emphatically, on the possibility of meaningful, positive transformation.

 

 

 

 

 

The Center for Armenian Arts present: