The exhibition could have easily been titled “Three and a Half Decades Later”, “Return to Painting”, or some other resonant and historical name. It could have been — if it weren’t for the newly created stamp artwork that defines the portrait series “Grigor Khachatryan: My Contemporary.”
Leaving its red imprint equally on each portrait, the stamp seems to “disregard” the precision of the depicted individual’s facial features. It ignores them, only to later emphasize the shared essence through the Russian text enclosed in a rectangular frame: “УМ, ЧЕСТЬ И СОВЕСТЬ НАШЕЙ ЭПОХИ” (“Intellect, Honor, and Conscience of Our Era”). This stamp highlights the fact that all these individuals — by virtue of being Grigor Khachatryan’s contemporaries — belong to the same era.
The ironic use of one of the Soviet era’s most grandiloquent slogans unmistakably hints at the time period in question, and at the people who once had the “fortune” of encountering this quote — originally used to describe the Communist Party of V. I. Lenin — everywhere.That is why any notion of a literal “return to painting” in this portrait series must be taken only in a conditional sense.
In line with his diverse performative practices, this series — seen as a kind of artistic performance — might even be compared to a unique form of human resource management (HRM), executed through painting.
It might be, were it not for the artist’s own ironic declaration made decades ago in his Manifesto, in which he claimed that not only is he, Grigor Khachatryan, not a human being, but neither are his contemporaries. And of course, were it not for the sadness that permeates this final irony by Grigor Khachatryan — sadness born from the very act of counting his contemporaries one by one through portraiture.
— Nazareth Karoyan
Exhibition curator: Nazareth Karoyan
Exhibition architect: Ruben Arevshatyan
