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Talar Aghbashian - Propped Up, 2023, Messy Greetings, 2023, Drowning Walking, 2023 and Between Two Worlds, 2023 - Spazio Ferdinand Stuflesser, Pontives

Talar Aghbashian, Propped Up, 2023, Messy Greetings, 2023, Drowning Walking, 2023, Between Two Worlds, 2023, Oil on Canvas, Variable Dimensions, Courtesy of the Artist and Marfa’ Projects, Beirut, Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo

Lebanese-Armenian artist Talar Aghbashian questions our relationship with the natural landscape through paintings that never represent a specific place, but are rather abstractions of landscapes and ruins. The works, all produced with oil paint on canvas, maintain a certain ambiguity: it is hard to tell whether the subject is a mountain range, a forest or the outline of a city, a volcanic eruption or a derelict building. Some paintings seem to depict lands submerged by water, where the artist imagines a past when mountains were coral reefs, or near-futures in which glaciers melted by global warming will turn valleys into basins of water.

The works on show at Pontives are characterised by a palette that focuses on cold colours – blacks, greys, blues and greens – in which the slow build-up of pictorial layers contrasts with a fast stroke that makes the subjects dynamic and vital. They are populated by figures in which the human form and the landscape are fused into a single entity, poised between the landscape and the human body, united by their being alive. It almost seems as if the artist wishes to invite the viewer not just to contemplate the landscape as a fixed, unchanging entity, but to take part in the life unfolding on the horizon. (M.P.)#

TALAR AGHBASHIAN

Talar Aghbashian (1981, Beirut, Lebanon) lives and works in London. Her paintings explore the human relationship with the landscape, and the projection of one onto the other. She graduated from the Lebanese University of Fine Arts, the Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, and the Birkbeck University of London. She was a recipient of AGBU grant NY, and Benlian Trust grant London. Aghbashian has taught in different schools, and MUT University in Lebanon, and has worked as a curator at the NHM and the V&A Museums London. Solo exhibitions include Marfa’, Beirut; The French Cultural Center Lebanon, and The Running Horse, Beirut; and Carbon 12, Dubai. Among her group exhibitions: GAMeC, Bergamo; 58th Venice Biennale; Natural Environment space, London; and Museum Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. In 2016 Aghbashian was a recipient of the John Moores prize, UK.

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Talar Aghbashian - Propped Up, 2023, Messy Greetings, 2023, Drowning Walking, 2023 and Between Two Worlds, 2023 - Spazio Ferdinand Stuflesser, Pontives

Talar Aghbashian, Propped Up, 2023, Messy Greetings, 2023, Drowning Walking, 2023, Between Two Worlds, 2023, Oil on Canvas, Variable Dimensions, Courtesy of the Artist and Marfa’ Projects, Beirut, Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo

Lebanese-Armenian artist Talar Aghbashian questions our relationship with the natural landscape through paintings that never represent a specific place, but are rather abstractions of landscapes and ruins. The works, all produced with oil paint on canvas, maintain a certain ambiguity: it is hard to tell whether the subject is a mountain range, a forest or the outline of a city, a volcanic eruption or a derelict building. Some paintings seem to depict lands submerged by water, where the artist imagines a past when mountains were coral reefs, or near-futures in which glaciers melted by global warming will turn valleys into basins of water.

The works on show at Pontives are characterised by a palette that focuses on cold colours – blacks, greys, blues and greens – in which the slow build-up of pictorial layers contrasts with a fast stroke that makes the subjects dynamic and vital. They are populated by figures in which the human form and the landscape are fused into a single entity, poised between the landscape and the human body, united by their being alive. It almost seems as if the artist wishes to invite the viewer not just to contemplate the landscape as a fixed, unchanging entity, but to take part in the life unfolding on the horizon. (M.P.)

TALAR AGHBASHIAN

Talar Aghbashian (1981, Beirut, Lebanon) lives and works in London. Her paintings explore the human relationship with the landscape, and the projection of one onto the other. She graduated from the Lebanese University of Fine Arts, the Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, and the Birkbeck University of London. She was a recipient of AGBU grant NY, and Benlian Trust grant London. Aghbashian has taught in different schools, and MUT University in Lebanon, and has worked as a curator at the NHM and the V&A Museums London. Solo exhibitions include Marfa’, Beirut; The French Cultural Center Lebanon, and The Running Horse, Beirut; and Carbon 12, Dubai. Among her group exhibitions: GAMeC, Bergamo; 58th Venice Biennale; Natural Environment space, London; and Museum Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. In 2016 Aghbashian was a recipient of the John Moores prize, UK.