Vartan Avakian - Of All that is Seen and Unseen: Past

In All That is Seen and Unseen, Avakian examines printed books as sculptural objects of multiple layers of inscription. Books are symbols of history and are imbued with the weight of culture and authority. They are also a repository of sedimentations and traces, including oils and salts left by human touch. Avakian devises a series of protocols, procedures and rituals to extract and bring to light latent layers of incidental inscriptions and markings that are reminiscent of palimpsests. Some of these layers appear like icons as light interacts with the oils and salts. Other layers are separated from the book object to be transferred and transcoded into new sculptural fossils.

In Composition with a Recurring Sound, the sound of a river flows through a sculptural piece of repeated forms. The sculpture captures and makes palpable, the movement of materials in the river, which includes water, biological life, industrial waste and other pollutants formed in its environmental surroundings. This flow creates a discreet almost inaudible resonance, that can be tactually felt on the sculpture. The sound waves of flowing water resonate through copper and reverberate in a closed circuit of repetitive forms indefinitely. These waves persist until they decay and are imperceptible. By trapping and capturing this material presence, these sculptures become sound fossils, that are not only a representation of this presence, but a new inscription created by it.

“Avakian is a cryptographer with an exceptional position. Instead of following the usual routes of coding and decoding, opening files and unpacking cases, he applies a reverse methodology, where he re-encrypts the codes in the composition of dust, through the own logs of dust. Thus, he dives into the archaeo-physics of the material, each with its own distinct geological terrain and unique ecology. Not only does he recollect the landscapes of its epoch, but he also uncovers the ancient and the futuristic, developing a crypto-hypothesis between time and matter. Avakian opens up new spaces of synthesis, contamination, complicity, and vagueness, while actively creating discontinuity against a backdrop of continuity, and pointing at the sites of discontinuity and rupture.”(1)

(1)Bedir, Merve. “Incognitum Pulvis.” All That Is Seen and Unseen, Verlag Kettler, 2019.

Vartan Avakian, b. 1977, Byblos, Lebanon, is an artist based in Beirut. He works with video, photography, installation and natural material. Avakian studied Architecture and Urban Culture at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, and Communication Arts at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. He is a founding member of the art collective Atfal Ahdath and a member of the Arab Image Foundation.

His latest exhibitions include Light in Wartime at Apexart, New York (2018), Home Beirut: Sounding the Neighbors at MAXXI, Rome (2018), Chapter V at Savvy Contemporary, Betlin (2018) and Esma’/Listen at the Beirut Art Center (2017).

His work has been shown in Center for Contemporary Arts Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2015; Sursock Museum, Beirut, 2015; VideoWorks, Beirut, 2015; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2012; Transmediale 2K+12, Berlin, 2012; Sharjah Biennial X, Sharjah, 2011; Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, 2011; The Cube, Taipei, 2011; South London Gallery, London, 2011; Home Works V, Beirut, 2010; Beirut Art Center, Beirut, 2010. Avakian is the recipient of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize 2012.