THE WORK OF NARINE ISAJANYAN
Did you ever wonder what kind of work the American modernist painter Jackson Pollock would be creating if he were still alive today? A pioneer of abstract expressionism, a school of American art that swept the world with its influence, he was not so much concerned with his famous paint dripping technique but with the resulting harmonic field that he created with it. This explosion of color in twisting, winding lines reminds me of the universe itself, expanding in every direction without any center, and yet harmonic and unified as if made of one organic piece.
We may assume Pollock would have continued with his constantly evolving discovery as he did before his untimely death. But perhaps the answer to what his work would be like if he were creating it today lies in the art of an emerging Armenian artist, one who’s come to America to fulfill her vision, be influenced by the powerfully free culture of modern art as it exists here, and influence the world herself.
Her name is Narine Isajanyan, and so much of her work reminds me of those unified harmonic fields of the American master. Whether on canvas, paper, board or wood, or actually made of metal, her pieces create landscapes that are as varied and unpredictable as they are constant and organic. These unified fields put her squarely in the modern school known generally as minimalism, but there’s nothing simplistic or contrived in her concepts or her process.
Since her arrival in Los Angeles, her work itself has continually evolved. I first saw her work in a solo show in West Hollywood. Her large white canvases were interrupted only with a single green leaf, as if to celebrate the lyricism of nature in a milky void. This lyricism is more pronounced in her earlier graphic works on paper, sometimes with bold streaks of a single color, and sometimes with whimsical spirals of silver and gold. And before this, she had received extensive technical training in representational drawing, painting and ceramics at universities in Yerevan and Moscow. Apparently it gave her the solid foundation for the flurry of progressive experimentation to follow.
Her early lyricism has since given way to a striking absence of representational form and been replaced by the inspirational concept of open space itself. The surface textures of those white canvases became transformed with drops and splashes of grays and black, introducing more struggle and intricacy.
In pieces exhibited at a group show in Glendale, scores of paper squares torn from a phone book are evenly spaced in columns and rows across very large white canvases, creating a unified impression on a graphic level while conceptually revealing the anonymity of the individual in the mass of humanity. While the sense of a minimal field remains intact, the literal content couldn’t be more profound.
Like so many artists since Andy Warhol, Narine is not without a conceptual and performance bent. Graphic works, with squares torn this time from high fashion magazines and evenly spaced on a long scrolling paper, were sprinkled with kerosene and lit on fire during the exhibition, and thus material glamour was consumed by the more beautiful expression of natural force.
Given a camera, especially a video camera, Narine may be compelled to shoot metallic tubes, winding mechanical structures, pillars under a pier, or twisting rusting debris in a junkyard. It was only a matter of time before she turned to metal itself as a material for her work. Her contribution to a group show in Beverly Hills included large shining rectangles of sheer steel, scraped in abstract patterns as if worn down by nature itself, and at the same time they focused on centerpieces of nail heads, projecting out in uniform rectangles of their own. Thus the hard industrial forces that so violently disturb the natural environment are made beautifully harmonic, even serene in their own right.
A number of these metallic surfaces also include a spiraling steel cylinder, like a silver snake across an iron grid. It’s as if she’s able to transform all she sees in this world into her own transcendent vision. And for the performance aspect of her show, the audience was asked to enter and walk upon a path through the gallery made up of souvenirs from Las Vegas casinos, so they crunched plastic slot machine cups and resort brochures under their feet.
This performance aspect of her work was toned down in her contribution to a show at Kerkoff Gallery on the campus of UCLA, where promotional postcards were torn in half and scattered against the walls as if sentimental memories had been exorcised and discarded. And on the walls were her mixed media paintings, this time on long strips of abandoned wooden planks, with striking minimal fields of yearning colors flowing and twisting and puddling from end to end. Always, her colors are very selectively minimal in themselves, two or three at most, often dark and muted, forming a contrast of shadows in a unique, emotionally charged blend.
In an exhibit in North Hollywood, her many large canvases mixed subtly different shades of dark blue and green, creating oceanic environments that were too dark for the lens of a camera but deeply captivating to the naked eye. And at a recent show in Park La Brea, her very long, extended canvases of whirling oranges, grays, blues might easily be mistaken for the work of Jackson Pollock himself.
Many of Narine’s very latest pieces almost recreate the feeling of a lunar landscape. Yet without intending to represent the natural world, without “rational interference”, they are in themselves a pure artistic reflection of nature responding within her.
Whatever material she chooses to use, whether incorporating cloth or even carpet, when she shapes it, molds it, paints it, is transformed into landscapes the likes of which I’ve never seen before. A secret ingredient of many recent works is sand (and kitty litter!), which coagulates in paint to form startling surfaces of uniform color.
All that remains to be seen is what she can do next to surprise even herself. Chosen to do the Art Direction, sets and scenery, for a new theatrical interpretation with music of Plato’s “Paidia”, this work may give us the answer. I am personally very excited to see what she can invent for this production. I wouldn’t be surprised to find it startling, even jarring, while exquisitely serene at the very same time.
Narine Isajanyan is without a doubt a true original. To call her the pride of the local Armenian community would be unfair: her work is thoroughly in the forward looking tradition of modern American and world art of today. She has unmistakably made a valuable extension of it, and made a powerful impression upon myself and so many others who’ve had the privilege to view it.
Ed Harker