The work of Jean Boghossian is formed from one of the humblest, simplest of actions, the spark of a flame, yet also one of the most important in human history. Both humble and profound, the use of fire speaks to the power of a simple gesture to transform material as well as to a personal curiosity about the process of burning, of transformation. However significant, the flame is only a part of this story, and also at play are colour, texture, a volcanic eruption, a cedar, the simple rhythm of bones emerging, or the glitch in the machine, a challenge to an established order.
Boghossian’s ‘fire dance’, as he has termed it, is a delicate search for balance within chaos, the transformation of surface through attention, skill and care, the humble and violent fire representing both sides of life, and of humanity.
Boghossian’s forthcoming exhibition at Saleh Barakat Gallery draws together painting, wood sculptures and ceramics. Materials such as oil, pigments, smoke, ashes, paper, wood, clay and acrylic are combined with techniques including folding and collage to combine with fire. Tending increasingly toward abstraction, there is an organic movement to his explorations in ceramics, which he has undertaken over the last eight years, a material with a natural relationship with the flame, kiln, oven, the clay becoming hard, brittle, stable under its heat. In all of his material explorations there is density, depth, sensitivity and thickness, crackling, cracking, marbling, surface.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Boitsfort and Uccle while continuing his involvement in the jewelry trade.
Boghossian has exhibited widely, including representing Armenia at the Venice Biennale in 2017. Recent exhibitions have taken place in Korea, Lebanon, Monaco, Italy, Belgium and Qatar. His last solo exhibition was held at Anima Gallery in Doha, Qata, in 2024.
Through his unique use of fire, he continues to explore contemporary themes, establishing himself as a significant figure in today’s art world.
The work of Yasmina Nysten tends towards the face, portraits that combine large swathes of muted colour with quick swatches of unapologetic brightness. Her sensitivity to contrast plays out also in the wider environs of her paintings, including objects so casually yet carefully placed we cannot but imagine they have some specific meaning, a relation to the face beside them, the body resting, the shifted world the artist creates. Pattern, when used, is dedicated, honours the way the world can catch on a moment, the light can catch, the world becoming for a second all pattern, all flecks and small, shifting subtleties. The world here divides into parts and pattern, more than light, brights and darks. There is a recognisable and an unrecognisable part, a clear brush stroke, a face formed from parts, what else forms a face except reality has no brush, or it is harder to see the strokes. In Nysten’s words these portraits ‘do not speak a language; rather, they teeter on the edge of a message. They offer only their ground: an absolute, silent being-there that confronts us at the very limit of what can be seen’.
