ART CITIES:Paris-Sarkis

Sarkis Zabunyan, who is known only by his first name, is an internationally acclaimed conceptual artist hailing from Turkey. In a prolific career that encompasses over six decades, he had developed a unique body of work composed of films, paintings, drawings, texts, photographs, and site-specific works that deal with a wide range of themes and explore issues of presence and absence, place and identity, permanence and transience, time and memory. Over the years, he became most famous for his sensory and enigmatic installations that combine light, sounds and different kind of materials.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Nathalie Obadia Archive

Composed of nearly 60 stained-glass windows, meticulously created and arranged by Sarkis, the installation “Vitraux Mobiles” first seizes the viewer with its impressive scale, then strikes on an emotional level as the details of the images that make up this unprecedented assemblage begin to emerge. Drawn from widely varied iconographical sources, these photographs share a common technique: each is framed within a stained-glass window propped up on an easel. These images were either shot by Sarkis and come from unspecified chronological and geographical contexts, or were reclaimed by the artist, thus contributing to an impression of a common visual memory. Using as starting points some photographs taken, in particular, in India, in the Netherlands, in Turkey, in Japan, in France, in Germany, or in the entrance of his studio Sarkis also incorporates his series “Portraits Anonymes” and the series “Innocents” in the composition of this back-lit glass edifice. Le Prototype de l’Abbaye de Silvacane stands as a key marker to show Sarkis’s respect for the craftsmanship that goes into these glass works. Produced nearly 20 years ago, in the context of a public commission he received for the stained-glass windows, chairs and crystal bar of the pulpit in the refectory of the Cistercian abbey, it acts as a catalyst, and several projects would later be based around stained-glass windows. One of the most arresting shows was the exhibition “Ailleurs Ici” at the Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire, in 2012, which resulted in the production of 72 stained-glass windows, composed of essential snapshots that emerged from his considerable image library—a candid anthology, of which certain elements became the present Vitraux Mobiles. With the precision and humility that characterize his work, Sarkis transcends the historical religiousness of the medium while also honoring his masters and the anonymous crowds, which he captures on film with an empathy that expresses the importance he gives to fresh and unposed glimpses of ordinary life. Be it the Innocents’ fierce statuettes, inspired by collectible figurines apparently judged too trivial, a store mannequin, an assemblage of metallic beams (or a tattooed back his keen gaze freezes these fleeting moments by encircling them in metal.

Info: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 18 rue du Bourg-Tibourg, Paris, Duration: 5/10-21/12/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.nathalieobadia.com