Artist Karen Ohanyan now lives on the outskirts of Gyumri, where a spectacular view opens. It's a green field, two factory buildings and a chimney can be seen in the distance. Storks, perhaps the only pair in the city, have nested next to the house. An almost idyllic landscape, which, however, awakened other moods in the artist. It can be described as revolutionary melancholy.
Every artistic imagination has an overt or unrevealed melancholy, because there is no imagination without loss, and in many of Karen Ohanyan's works in this series, the dim sun of melancholy is present, illuminating the ruins of reality. Sunset, the sun going west, which is an important concept for the artist.
Two genres dominate his new series: landscape and still life. But these two traditional genres have received an unexpected, innovative and impressive interpretation. The works have two layers of meaning, overt or unrevealed: the first layer is nature, the second has a political content. The content of Karen Ohanyan's series is not only nature or the charm of flowers depicted in still lifes, but also the death of communism and war.
In his works, he speaks about the death of communism and war sometimes directly, sometimes he creates impressive painting symbols and metaphors. His works are often characterized by the restrained aesthetics of conceptual art, which makes it possible to consider the series as a painting installation.
Communism is dead, but there is Holland, whose flag is present in almost all the paintings. The idea of Holland is opposed to the dead idea of communism. For the artist Holland is a symbol of freedom, peace and the lightness of happiness. This is how the work in which the author depicted himself holding balloons of Dutch flag should be understood. In another work, the artist on top of a mountain, on a canvas is painting a Dutch flag, and on the bottom there are photographic overlays depicting violence and war against a toxic green background.
The traces of communism in Armenia, especially in Gyumri, are everywhere, usually they are the ruined industrial buildings in our almost deindustrialized country. The two industrial buildings and the chimney repeated in many of Ohanyan's works are not only important elements of the landscape, but also symbolize the Soviet past. That thought, the idea of the death of communism, is directly embodied in the painting "Statue of Workers", which is a statue group placed on the Gyumri-Jajur road, now in ruins. The death of communism is the death of work.
Similarly, Alain Badiou talking about the "death of communism", connects it with the disappearance of "we", "the philosophy of the commune is doomed to die in the presenter". In another place he writes: "This means that the death of communism becomes the second death of God, but already in the kingdom of history." "The death of communism", like the nietzschean "death of God" in the last century, is now one of the most important philosophical problems. Karen Ohanyan's approach is also philosophical.
In another painting of the artist, there is a conventional landscape, and in the bottom row there are portraits of famous revolutionaries, in which one can also guess the features of the artist. Karen Ohanyan has leftist revolutionary views, both in art and in politics. He is fiery and impetuous in character, like many revolutionaries, but he is also characterized by melancholia, incomprehensible and futile sadness, which is typical of poets.
The artist depicted himself in many paintings, as if saying, I don’t only see what I depict but I am present inside. This gives his works additional performativity and existential sensitivity. The death of communism, wars, human suffering are also his own experiences, not only a description of reality, they are passed not only through the artist’s eyes, but through his whole body.
Flowers often resemble human eyes. They also see and feel the reality around us. In one of the still lifes, there are burn marks on the flowers, and there is a hole on the canvas in place of the roots. In the other, there are field flowers, miniature birds, attached to which is a photograph where a protester holds a placard saying "the only good communist is a dead communist". The artist does not have anti-communist views, but the attached photograph records the fact that those words were prophetic: communism is really dead. Another almost unnoticeable detail: on one of the flowers is an appliqué of a dead bee, another symbol of the dead worker.
The largest and, in my opinion, the most impressive painting of the series is "Storks". Scorched spikes, a stork's nest, and a pair of storks in flight convey the disaster of war. The attached black and white political photo makes the artist's message clear.
Communism, unlike religion, did not know what to do with death. The best monument to this confusion is the mausoleum where Lenin's body continues Lenin's work today. Communism did not even imagine its own death.
The place of the exhibition is also symbolic: House-Museum of Sergey Merkurov. He was not only a famous Soviet sculptor, but he was also the one entrusted with the task of taking the death masks of communist leaders. This is exactly the place where one can contemplate the death of communism and our post-communist reality.
As an important part of the painting installation, as a complement to the political and ontological meaning of the series, the artist also included Sergey Merkurov's death mask of Lenin. It proves: yes, communism is dead and wars are endless.
Karen Ohanyan's art is the subject's struggle with the symbolic collapse, identified with the "death of communism" and mutilations brought by wars. His art does not try to overcome the internal and external causes of mental and moral suffering, but it is able to lead the viewer on the path of catharsis.