Berlin is home to the remarkable collage art of Sam Grigorian. He is a Yerevan-born artist. He now lives and works in Berlin since 1992.
Sam Grigorian’s art is driven by the urge to see something new. He wants to make visible what one would otherwise only feel. His collage is remarkable. It has delicacy of tonality and power of non-objective imagery. It also has dramatic engagement of size.
Grigorian works with non-referential forms. He assembles them into neo-cubist compositions. This allows him to work on an abstract expressionist scale. The larger his work, the more powerful it becomes. It has rhythmic and sensuous command of lateral space and expansive surface.
Incidental references to writing and musical notation recur in his work. But Sam Grigorian is principally interested in texture and structure. He also focuses on muted coloration. He is interested in the color and shape of paper. This includes fine letter paper and parchment.
Sam Grigorian achieves a uniform skin by layering. He treats and scratches away outer layers. He subtly depends on qualities of weathering. This achieves tonal balance from area to area. The bigger the work, the more it becomes a map. Regions define themselves and roads and borders emerge. Color enters quietly. It maintains a respectful subordination to composition.
Sam Grigorian’s Armenian roots become visible through his special relation to paper. He makes it by hand before using it. As the artist strips back layers on the canvas, enigmatic signs appear. These signs become elements of a coded language. These are personal marks blended with emblems of traditional symbols. This makes the loss of oral tradition visible. It makes the loss tangible.
Sam Grigorian was born in 1957 in Yerevan, Armenia. He received his B.A from Art Academy in Yerevan in 1977. Grigorian’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions globally. These include the Musée du Luxemburg in Paris and the Museum of Modern Arts in Yerevan. He also exhibited at Anna Pappas Gallery in Melbourne and Galerie Tammen in Berlin. His work is in permanent collections. These include the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Yerevan.
In his smaller works, Sam Grigorian plays more traditionally with collage elements and with language. These pieces are hardly less persuasive than his mural-size works. Their constrained size makes them more approachable. But their images and conceptual preoccupations are more familiar. The vision and ambition manifested in the large works are unanticipated and stunning. Sam Grigorian’s atelier is a testament to his unique vision.