Aleksandr Avagyan

Aleksandr Avagyan was born in 1990 in Yerevan, in the former Soviet Union of Armenia. Aleksandr Avagyan studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Yerevan before moving to Marseille in 2012. After a short stint at the Beaux-Arts, he continued his studies in Fine Arts at the University of Aix-Marseille.

Since 2014, the artist has been interested notions of zone, place and synthetic landscape. Influenced by his experience of Marseille's northern neighborhoods, and having been denied the right to return to his native country for many years, his landscapes become increasingly impersonal and neutral, tending towards the abstract. Equally interested in the world's political maps, and in particular in self-proclaimed countries not recognized by international society, Aleksandr Avagyan's painting attempts to embody zones of resistance.

Armed with an extremely colorful and vivid palette, his works, now abstract, leave the classical perimeter of format to spread towards more surprising forms, sometimes even three-dimensional. Tasks of color, which the painter calls "zones", are sometimes adjacent and coexistent, but also clash and conflict. collide and enter into conflict. Thanks to the introduction of volume, the painting takes shape and positions itself to support a wall, brace a blanket or demarcate a border.

She uses a wide range of materials: Craft paper, aluminum sheets, wooden cleats and planks, as well as cardboard and canvas. These materials, often raw and seemingly uninteresting, are mostly found, salvaged or donated. That's why the encounter is at the heart of Avagyan's work, as it is necessary for the raw material to catch the eye.