Loading...
Vahakn Arslanian
At 42, his distinctive vision has remained largely in tact – an outsider peering at fliers – physical, possibly spiritual: among them birds, planes, candles newly smoking. More recently, he has included human figures in some of ... more >> Andrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition for Vahakn Arslanian, his fourth with the gallery. The show features recent works and includes a variety of pieces made over the last fifteen years.
At 42, his distinctive vision has remained largely in tact – an outsider peering at fliers – physical, possibly spiritual: among them birds, planes, candles newly smoking. More recently, he has included human figures in some of his works and has also begun to paint with nail polish.
Arslanian is, by now, a familiar figure in New York art world circles. His art has been exhibited extensively since he was a child. At the age of five, he was smashing clay pots in Julian Schnabel’s studio, which Schnabel wrote about in the forward to his 1987 book C.V.J. Self-taught, Arslanian has been deaf since birth and does not speak either. He has always been drawn to explosions and the shattering of glass. He houses his drawings and paintings in discarded windows that are often atypical in some way – he buys spare windows from airplanes on eBay – and then cuts the glass to delineate graphite-drawn from painted sections with borders using a stained-glass leading technique.
Vahakn Arslanian’s art has been exhibited in many venues in New York including Maccarone Gallery (2009) and the Outsider Art Fair (2013). In addition, his work has been shown at the American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore (2009) and at Marc Jancou Gallery, Geneva and New York (2013, 2015). His work was included in The Brucennial, presented by the Bruce High Quality Foundation and Vito Schnabel (2010, 2012). His collaboration with Julian Schnabel, The Ones You Didn’t Write—The Maybach Car, was displayed on the Grand Canal during the Venice Biennale in 2011.
