Köprüde / On the Bridge

Gurgen Babayan

Gurgen Babayan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, in 1984. Between 2002-2008 he educated at The Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Painting. His first solo exhibition “The Realist” took place in Moscow Artists’ Union (Russia) in 2017. A figurative artist, Gurgen Babayan is focusing on basic instincts and emotions of daily life, analyzing the interesting aspects in their creation and trying to find by means of visual forms the reflections of humanity’s self-essence. Believing this visual language to be self sufficient and not needing any further verbal explanation, the important thing for Babayan is the ingenuity in relaying this visual form. Although the artist is clearly influenced by classic arts, especially the painting traditions of Northern Renaissance, he strives to create a personal art style and a pictorial language of his own. Babayan focuses on Christian mythology and their possible daily occurrences by creating a visual story in his works. Painted in a “primitively-naturalistic” manner and elaborated with rigor; the figures, gestures, dullish and static compositions which create the work itself are colored and illuminated in due form. These elaborated surfaces of paintings serve to create an air of mystery for the scene, while simultaneously invoking a feeling that “there is something from dreams in the atmosphere.”