Melik Ohanian at Dvir Gallery

Artist: Melik Ohanian

Exhibition title: In Time

Venue: Dvir Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

Date: January 26 – March 18, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Dvir Gallery, Brussels

For his first one-person show at Dvir Gallery, Melik Ohanian, the laureate of 2015 Marcel Duchamp prize, will exhibit recent works. Through a historical, scientific, philosophical and poetic approach the exhibition questions the human perception and consciousness, sometimes paradoxical, regarding time and space.

Melik Ohanian, Portrait of Duration — Cesium Series (T1004), 2015, Black and white photograph, 53 x 43 x 5cm (framed)

For Portrait of Duration, Melik Ohanian lingers on the observation and representation of the measurement of time, and more particularly within its base unit, the second. In a University laboratory, he conducts a scientific experiment to observe Cesium— the radioactive element used in atomic clocks to define the universal second—during its transition from solid to liquid state.

Portrait of Duration—Cesium Series is a series of black and white photographs, which reveal 60 variations extracted from the above-mentioned experiments. Through this representation of time by matter, each photograph records the appearance of the latter, at a T moment.

The complete series of 60 photographs was shown in 2016 at the Centre Pompidou during Melik Ohanian’s exhibition Under Shadows—Marcel Duchamp Price 2015.

Melik Ohanian, Portrait of Duration — Cesium Series T1128, 2015, Black and white photograph, 53 x 43 x 5cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Portrait of Duration — Cesium Series T0903, 2015, Black and white photograph, 53 x 43 x 5cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Portrait of Duration — Cesium Series T2331, 2015, Black and white photograph, 53 x 43 x 5cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Portrait of Duration — Cesium Series T0248, 2015, Black and white photograph, 53 x 43 x 5cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Portrait of Duration — Cesium Series T2157, 2015, Black and white photograph, 53 x 43 x 5cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Futuring (cosmos), 2011, Glass, metal, mirror, Glass ball Ø 30 cm, Pedestal and mirror, 100 x 100 x 100cm

Futuring (planet) stems from a magnetic pole reversal. This geological phenomenon, frequent within the Earth’s history, is the result of a disruption, which causes the magnetic poles to migrate to the surface of the globe. At the end of this process, the poles find their initial position, or switch.
The 30cm glass globe brings to mind the globes used by geographers since the end of the XV century. An object of attraction and fascination, the sphere, absorbs and then projects an inversed image of ourselves in our surroundings, correlating different points within the space and contextualizing a world, ever evolving, depending on its point of view. The sphere functions as an eyeball takes over a field of reality, reverses the image, then offers it up to interpretation, or to the imaginary. This measuring instrument, void of signs, graduation or scale, offers neither certitude nor verification. It deploys a paradoxical and muted cartography, where the rational side of our relationship to the world disappears.

Two versions of Futuring exist: Planet, whose industrially manufactured glass is homogeneous; and Cosmos, in which the handcrafted glass is filled with air pockets.

Melik Ohanian, Futuring (cosmos), 2011, Glass, metal, mirror, Glass ball Ø 30 cm, Pedestal and mirror, 100 x 100 x 100cm

Melik Ohanian, Deviation (01) — Disgrace, 2014, Letters in polystyrene and plaster, 60 x 120cm

With the Deviation series, language and architecture are literally blurred into one another. Letters take shape as much as they gradually disappear into the wall. A choice of English words starting with the prefix DIS — which expresses reversal of deprivation — invites a semantic experience in relation to our perception and our practice of space. The superimposed repetition of the same word, in two distict forms, here formulates a potential paradox.

Deviation, was presented for the first time in the Stuttering monographic exhibition at the Center d’Art Contemporain of Sète in 2014. For more info: stuttering.melikohanian.com

Melik Ohanian, Deviation (03) — Dislocate, 2014, Letters in polystyrene and plaster, 60 x 120cm

Melik Ohanian, Deviation (04) — Disorder, 2014, Letters in polystyrene and plaster, 60 x 120cm

Melik Ohanian, Portrait of Duration — Cesium Series II T0174, T2553, T1902, 2016, Color photograph mounted on aluminium, 173 x 150 x 5cm (framed)

For Portrait of Duration, Melik Ohanian lingers on the observation and representation of the measurement of time, particularly within its base unit, the second.
In a University laboratory, he conducts a scientific experiment to observe Cesium— the radioactive element used in atomic clocks to define the universal second—during its transition from solid to liquid state.

Portrait of Duration—Series II is a large-scale photographic series in color. Revealing the different instances observed during this experiment. In this color version, the format of the photograph is slightly augmented in relation to its defined maximum definition, allowing us to see the material of the image itself.

Melik Ohanian, Portrait of Duration — Cesium Series II T1902, 2016, Color photograph mounted on aluminium, 173 x 150 x 5cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Portrait of Duration — Cesium Series II T2553, 2016, Color photograph mounted on aluminium, 173 x 150 x 5cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Portrait of Duration — Cesium Series II T0174, 2016, Color photograph mounted on aluminium, 173 x 150 x 5cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Nowwhere, 2016, Letters in glass, 60 x 360 x 0,5cm

In Word(s) and Deviation, Melik Ohanian creates tension and breaks between the meaning of two words. NOW and WHERE overlap each other, they reinforce each other as much as they disappear, both words raising questions of space and time. The artist guides us towards geopolitical doubt which is also an existential one, and our attachment to space is intensified as much as it is denied. The glass renders the question of belonging and of identity transparent, weakening our certitudes.

Melik Ohanian, Nowwhere, 2016, Letters in glass, 60 x 360 x 0,5cm

Melik Ohanian, Pulp Off, 2014, 120 pulped books Mémoires du génocide arménien by Janine Altounian, 24 color reproductions of Journal de déportation by Vahram Altounian, 210 x 297mm (framed) and digital book online memoires.ommx.studio

Pulp Off is an installation whose point of origin is the book “Mémoires du génocide arménien — Héritage traumatique et travail analytique” of the essayist and translator Janine Altounian. Testimony of the history of a people, the book is composed of a facsimile reproduction of the diary of deportation of the author’s father written between 1915 and 1919 and in parallel, an analytical plunge into these writings through the prism of History.
In 2014, Melik Ohanian offered the author to redeem part of the unsold books—120 copies—of this work destined for the pestle by the editor, in order to take care of the destruction himself.
At the center of the exhibition space, the mass of shredded paper represents this act of decomposition and recomposition of the original work. On the walls, the original ethnographic object — the deportation journal written in Armenian — was extracted and reproduced. Wishing to perpetuate access to the reading of the book, the artist digitized it prior to its destruction, making it available for free at memoires.ommx.org

Melik Ohanian, Post-Image, 2014, Black and white photograph, 124 x 84 x 3cm (framed)

Post-Image is a series created from international press media images that have been meticulously torn by the artist. These front-page newspaper images have become fragments, micro-territories, elliptically questioning our collective unconscious.

Melik Ohanian, Post-Image, 2014, Black and white photograph, 124 x 84 x 3cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Post-Image — 2014.11.11, 2014, Black and white photograph, 124 x 84 x 3cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Post-Image — 2013.03.27, 2014, Black and white photograph, 124 x 84 x 3cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Post-Image — 2014.12.21, 2014, Black and white photograph, 124 x 84 x 3cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Post-Image — 2013.11.24, 2014, Black and white photograph, 124 x 84 x 3cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Post-Image — 2013.05.05, 2014, Black and white photograph, 124 x 84 x 3cm (framed)

Melik Ohanian, Word(s) — TI(M)ES, 2014

Melik Ohanian, Word(s) — (T)HERE, 2014, Animated lightbox with LED, 17 x 50 x 12.5cm

In one word: words. Which through addition or subtraction, oscillate between two definitions. Two notions merge together, to form a third: the hypothesis of silent utopias, whose function of mutation has been marginalized. Hybrid words, or boundaries, which in turn explore the lexical, mental, political and social field.