M I C H A E L W A L L S G A L L E R Y, I N C.
156 Wooster Street, ground floor
New York City 10012
Press Release
EOZEN AGOPIAN
Paintings and works on paper, 19921993
Opening to the public on Friday, 10 September, five to seven pm.
Closing on Saturday, 9 October, six pm
* * * * *
Ms Agopian is an artist of Armenian heritage, born in Athens in 1960. She resided in United
States for twelve years, during which times he studied at Hunter College, New York City, and Pratt
Institute, Brooklyn, receiving degrees in arts from both institutions. In early 1993, she returned to
her native city to live and work for a period of time and recently took part in an international
symposium of visual artists on Spetses.
The forthcoming exhibition, her debut solo show in Manhattan, will include paintings and
drawings made during the eighteen months before her departure for Greece.
The viewer of these works will be immediately struck by the vitality they possess – the vibrancy
and range of color and the importance of the actual physicality of the work, which may remind
knowledgeable persons of the work of certain New York painters who emerged in the late 1960s
and early 70s (Joan Snyder and Alan Shields come to mind), who seemed to want to bring into
painting some of the physicality and objectiveness inherent to sculpture perhaps in response to
the rigorous quietude of Minimalism.
Ms Agopian's tack is to employ the traditional materials of painting wood stretchers, canvas
supports
(which she sometimes penetrates, layers, cuts, and weaves), and oil paints, but uses them in an
extended number of nontraditional ways in an effort (in her words) to embrace what is behind, next
to, in and out of the actual painted skin of the canvas in order to fuse the pictorial space with the
physical.
The artist emphasizes the crucial importance for her of connecting with the ages old human need
to express oneself through working with the hands. She speaks of achieving a sense of equilibrium
between the physical and mental being through the act of making of putting thing together.
The function of Art, she has written, is to capture and unify the essential forces and energies and
direct them towards the human soul in order to vitalize an enrich it.
Copyright 2014. Designed by DW. All rights Reserved