Misak Maghakyan lives and works in a village less than
2-hour from Yerevan. He is a sculptor. His love-affair with
stone started from early age. One can consider him “obsessed”
with stone.
“There is an energy in the stone, in its untouched and
‘unfettered’ state. This energy is conveyed to me. I receive
it, make it mine and treat it the way I do”, says the
artist. He does not go further. He “speaks” his piece by
either re-introducing crude stones in new environment,
in a special arrangement with other ones, or by taking
them back to their “roots”, whence he took them initially.
This is an exchange of “energy” the artist refers to. He
takes the viewer in the wild, where he has experienced
“order” within supposed wilderness. He takes the pieces
he has reconfigured, regrouped in new arrangements,
back to the nature and observes the “miracle” of the energy
he has experienced in them.
At the same time, in the wilderness near his village he
has found totally “ordered” natural arrangements, a number
of concentric conglomerates. The order in these phenomena
is the energy he talks about. He takes these
“energies” home and in the controlled environment of his
habitat he arranges these crude pieces in a different
order, which could be considered the “energy” he reproduces.
As in the case of concentric phenomena he found
in the wilderness, nothing can be added or taken away
from these new compositions. Small compositions of
stone are lined up in rows, or hung down from the ceiling,
which defies their natural attribute, turning them into
“raining” stones from the heavens…
Add to these crude stones scores of small clay figures
he has sculpted. Ironically all are sophisticated and torturous,
headless or with mutilated torsos, bursting in
anger, or sunk in pain and suffering. A distinct contrast
with the calm of the stones and concentric conglomerations
he found in the wilderness.
This is Misak Maghakyan. Let us watch…
Edward Balassanian
