Tek Başına I / Alone I

Tigran Tsitoghdzyan

Tigran Tsitoghdzyan is a New York City-based visual artist. He was born in Yerevan, Armenia, in 1976. In 1986, by the age of ten, over hundred of Tigran’s childhood paintings were chosen by Henrik Iguityan to be displayed in a solo exhibition in Armenia which thereafter traveled to the US, Russia, Japan and Spain... Ten years later he migrated to Europe and then later in 2009 to the US. Since then and from New York, his new series, technic and images are experiencing a phenomenal uprise that comprises both art quality and a bold, intriguing, personal expression with a growing resonance on the international scene. Tigran Tsitoghdzyan’s “Mirrors” are big, bold portraits. They are confrontationally large, and black and white, like the negative of a photograph, the colors of life enigmatically erased as though in a melancholy underworld. The artist, in his “Mirrors” series, concentrates on the modern spirit of individuality in this era of “selfies” culture. From this point of view, it is clear that the internet changed our need to be seen and the control we had about that image. Tigran begins his portraits with a photograph – a technique which has taken the place of the preparatory drawing today – and ends with a portrait that however photograph-like still has the nuanced touches of a refined painting. Carefully constructed of tonal shadows, it has the emotional subtlety that an everyday photograph lacks. Tigran’s portraits lend themselves to reflection, invite lingering contemplation, as a matter-of-fact photograph rarely does. The series; composed of large portraits, are technically based on fusing transparent superposed layers of hands over the faces of unhidden identity, reflecting about the impossibility of hiding our identity today if we were to accept the ubiquitous power and rules of social media, with no filters capable of controlling our sharings. At present the majority of his works are in private collections, galleries and museums.