Damn that wily old bastard Paul Sarkisian! He knows something-something important-but he's not telling and it's making me jealous and it's pissing me off. But let me start at the beginning.
Walking into SITE Santa Fe (1606 Paseo de Peralta, 989-1199) for Sarkisian's exhibition is like coming home again. And it isn't just that SITE's restored to it's quasi-original, open and free-breathing architecture, it isn't just that, though Sarkisian's work is massive in scale (and here it is quite important to picture the nearly 77-year old artist doing supernatural Kung Fu acrobatics and laughing haughtily as he completes
the gigantic paintings that require several burly young men, a large truck and some serious hydraulic equipment for a short trip across town) but that it is, if my tinny, 7th-grade memory serves, something like an atom; it is solid enough to comprise the fundamental structure of all matter, and yet comprised of mostly blank space, miraculously empty. And that would be empty in a boddhisatva, drunken master,
Big Lebowski
kind
of way, as opposed to void of content. Which is why I think he knows something that he's keeping to himself and I believe it to be this: the secret of the universe.
That may sound like a tall order for what amounts to either epoxy/resin or polyurethane on wood or fiberglass and assembled into grids, waves and bright, wild puzzle pieces. But Sarkisian's refusal to necessarily adhere to a square or a rectangle and his insistence on big, physical, flowing work-perfect and refined from a distance-but plump with happy accidents, frayed edges, dirty flecks, bubbles and distortions is not about "painting" or "art history" or any of the other pompous and questionable reasons sometimes listed for working in unusual shapes, sizes and dimensions. Rather it is because Sarkisian, a well-known painter of consummate, ungodly, obsessive control has let go and is cackling and adrift at light speed through the cosmos of being alive with something close to chaotic holiness.
But none of it is difficult to understand. Position yourself before one of Sarkisian's panelled, interlocking compositions and the first thing that comes to mind is courageous color. There are some pieces with sumptuous, predictable colors, one bright yellow/baby blue piece and an undulating fire-orange monster of a painting in particular, but more often than not Sarkisian's choices fall well outside of the usual suspects. He will gleefully combine green and purple-or is it bronze?-with
the kind of devil-may-care attitude of a precocious, utterly original child. While some artists spend their lives trying to capture a naive sense of line, Sarkisian has fallen into the hidden hollow of innocent and earnest shape and color. The next thing to consider is the modular nature of the work, constructed of panels or smaller individual pieces for obvious practical reasons, they also convey a tremendous sense of physicality in their creation and the presence is alarming like a sudden, much needed embrace. But what's more, the paintings demand and encourage physicality from the viewer. It is imperative to move around the work as well as toward and away from it. And that's when the realization hits that none of the colors is static, each piece changes in relation to the viewer and the viewer's perceptions and judgements, naturally enough, reciprocate.
And that is when a deep, rubbery, puckering, shiny happiness settles into the gut and the shifting, ephemeral nature of the work becomes clear and it's obvious Sarkisian is less making paintings and more harnessing energy. What sits on the walls is just a transient conglomeration of molecules that the artist has invited to collaborate with him for a period of time.
There is one photorealist painting of a store front from decades ago when Sarkisian was famous for such stuff. It is absolutely mind-blowing. It is as easy to sit before it for hours, contemplating humanity, skill, meaning, reality, economics-it may as well be Gericault's
The Raft of the Medusa
, it is that astonishing. It's also frustrating to have it intrude on what is such an ambitious and well-curated (by former SITE director Louis Grachos) selection of Sarkisian's recent and entirely different work.
"That older piece shows his talent," Sarkisian's son Peter-an accomplished artist in his own right-told me, "and the rest of this work shows that he's finally got past his talent." Which is true. Picasso had to draw perfect sparrows before he could draw imperfect sparrows and Sarkisian had to exert control before relinquishing it.
Now that he has let go, he's riding on that kinetic zing that life offers to those who suddenly realize there are no rules, accounting for variables is just accounting and chips never have to fall anywhere. It's such a simple truth, but so rarely attained in life and so very rarely achieved in art. Yes, I could say that Paul Sarkisian has become something of skinny, manic Buddha, but that wouldn't be quite right and wouldn't quite sum up what it takes to embark on a quest for truth and purity in this modern thicket of over-analysis and misplaced meaning. I would have to say Sarkisian is a lot more like that other seeker of truth and bender of space and time, the Silver Surfer.
