Arminée Chahbazian
My work as a sculptor, employing very physical and heavy materials, has also led me down a reactionary path of combining lightweight and ephemeral materials to create drawings.
My recent sculpture combines stone elements, both carved and assembled, into what I call tablets. The imagery references a specific place or phenomenon in the natural world, often based on a personal experience. The compositions, forms and textures also evoke a particular state of mind. Key to this concept is the notion of “landscape,” both in the traditional sense, and in a more expansive, imaginary sense.
The concept of landscape is also an inherent basis for my drawings, most of which evolve spontaneously as I combine non-objective shapes, reflecting patterns in nature, into dynamic compositions. All drawings consist of multiple layers of paper and duralar, and with air gently moving between these layers, the relationships of the composition are constantly shifting. (A common aesthetic emerges with my sculptural work in the way lights plays over the subtly carved stone surfaces.) Meanwhile, a new series of layered, large-scale drawings is much more representational, alluding to micro/macro environments strangely defined by displaced elements. All told, my focus is to consistently present a narrative based on suggestive forms and shifting conditions; something real, something imagined, and never static.
For more information about the artist, please visit her website.