Karen Ohanyan
Karen Ohanyan and his body of work define the evolution of contemporary Armenian art and the steadfast progress the country is registering. Ohanyan sees form, style, and medium as tools to communicate the emotions and feelings that preoccupy him at a given moment. Without committing himself to a particular painterly tradition, granting himself the freedom to create what he wants and when he wants, Ohanyan’s work is entirely rooted in and informed by the human tradition of resilience and hope.
In this profane world, ravaged by disasters, both man-made and natural, where genocides, mass-shootings, and extreme poverty form the reality of everyday life, Ohanyan no longer attempts to conceal anything. However, despite these harsh realities, he reveals the utopian hope of eternal peace that may be reached by both the connection between man and nature, and more importantly through one's connection to one’s own mind and body. It is as if Ohanyan removes all barriers and zooms in into each individual droplet, thus revealing them to the collective world. Life is balanced and peaceful in these paintings, where light, clouds, sun, and sea reveal their secrets – they follow the tradition and adapt to new realities
Born in 1981 in Yerevan, Armenia, Karen Ohanyan’s life evolved around the civil society struggles of his homeland. As a boy, Ohanyan experienced the consequences that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, namely massacres, blockade, wars, and the cold-blooded murder of his compatriots by the ruling regime of Armenia during the March 1, 2008 protests in Yerevan. These are the struggles that crystallized the realities of post-Soviet Armenia and defined Ohanyan’s art during that period. While his painting evolved in terms of form, style, and medium, Ohanyan stayed true to his progressive spirit in his relation to both the arts and society. It is this revolutionary and evolutionary spirit that takes shape in the most recent paintings created outside of the borders of his homeland.
