Teni Vardanyan

In Vardanyan’s art the expulsion of a fetus, malady, death, and other unimaginably painful events take shape on paper and canvas. Just like in theater, life is staged with scenes unfolding and alternating on two canvases, hanging loose from the ceiling, like stage curtains. In essence, Vardanyan’s body of work stages a lifespan that begins and ends somewhere in space and time. A staged cycle that perhaps needs visual tools to relate more easily to the viewer. A life too large to be lived in one body may expel and run like a river, reminiscent of bodily fluids responsible for the cycle of reproduction. In these works, the bodies are distorted and painted in a flattened form, creating a figure that seems hollow, as if the soul escaped the body and were unable to find its way back. These ponderous bodies have disproportionately thinner – or otherwise weaker – legs, often bent knees, and move cumbersomely through life, or are otherwise completely unable to move. They dissolve into a chair or into each other.

​

Feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism are present in most of the works on display. For Vardanyan, art is a form of acceptance of the dialectical opposition between pleasure and pain. Thus, in some of the works we see flowers surrealistically blooming out of affliction, turning suffering into salvation.