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Markarian Vartan
Discover the artist and the work through the video at the link.
The video artwork “Look Around” explores the mechanism of perceiving reality through the gaze — an act of seeing that is both an observation and an interpretation of the world. The blinking eyes projected onto the wall become a portal between different states of time, memory, and experience. Each blink is not merely a fleeting moment but a transformation, where one sequence is replaced by another, creating an effect of non-linear visual narration.
The work reflects a personal video archive accumulated over years of artistic practice, fragmenting into a single movement — the movement of the gaze. Here, the eyes are not just an image but a symbol of our ability to perceive and analyze reality. At the same time, they reveal the physical limitations of human vision: what we observe is always just a fragment of a greater, possibly invisible, dimension.
Just as human perception is confined to a certain spectrum of space and time, blinking serves as a reminder of the moments of loss and recovery of visual information. The space between blinks becomes a metaphor for the unseen — what escapes our awareness yet continues to exist.
The viewers find themselves under an intense gaze — one that seems to have a life of its own, continuously scanning, altering, and transforming reality.
The video fragments that appear within the eyes represent different facets of reality — from documentary footage of war and ecological consequences to memories of rural landscapes shifting under the passage of time. This is a personal chronicle without linear progression, existing instead as bursts of memory — a collage of the past, present, and subconscious.
Vartan Markarian was born in 1991 in Poltava, Ukraine.
Education
2008–2014 – Poltava National Technical University named after Y. Kondratyuk. Master’s Degree in Fine Arts.
Collective Exhibitions
2023 – Long Night. Contemporary Art Center JUMP. Ukraine. Poltava
2023 – “Ukraine: Fields of Plough, Fields of War”. Narodni Zemedelske Muzeum. Ostrava. Czech Republic
2022 – Ukrainian Biennale of Digital and Media Art. Ukraine. Lviv, Kyiv
2022 – Neutralization. Contemporary Art Center JUMP. Ukraine. Poltava
2022 – ВИСТАВКА. Contemporary Art Center JUMP. Ukraine. Poltava
2020 – PLAN B Fest. Ukraine. Online
2020 – ARS Electronica Festival American Art Incubator – Project “VirtualPolitik”. Austria
2020 – Immunity Project. Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art of the Korsaks. Ukraine. Lutsk
2020 – The Environment of Existence. Manifesto 2020. Lavra Art Gallery. Kyiv. Ukraine
2019 – Biennale of Contemporary Art “Bread”. Hlebzawod. Kyiv. Ukraine
2019 – Art Project Genesis. Dancing House Gallery. Prague. Czech Republic
2019 – Frontier – VR Art Festival. Ukraine. Kyiv. M17 Contemporary Art Center
2019 – “Waves of Reality or Excitement in Travneve”. Art Residence Nazar Voitovych, Modern Art Research Institute of Ukraine. Kyiv
2019 – “417 Error. Expectation Failed”. Nikolai Yaroshenko Art Museum. Poltava. Ukraine
2018 – “Without Three Steps Genesis”. Palazzo Velli Expo. Italy. Rome
2017 – “Fixing the Impossible”. Modern Art Research Institute of Ukrainian Academy of Arts and National Taras Shevchenko Museum. Ukraine. Kyiv
2017 – Finalist of “Art-Battle”. Gallery “White World”. Ukraine. Kyiv
2017 – “White on the White”. Contemporary Art Center JUMP. Ukraine. Poltava
2017 – Art Autumn Contemporary. M17 Contemporary Art Center. Ukraine. Kyiv
Personal Exhibitions
2019 – “Wandering Only Whispers”. Bunkermuz Gallery. Ukraine. Ternopil
2019 – “Danger Looking for a Fairy Tale”. Contemporary Art Center JUMP. Ukraine. Poltava
2018 – “City Identification”. AVS Art Gallery. Ukraine. Kyiv
2017 – “Smoke Part 2”. Sklo Gallery. Ukraine. Kyiv
2016 – “URBAN”. Poltava Art Gallery (Nikolai Yaroshenko Art Museum). Poltava. Ukraine
2016 – “Smoke”. Contemporary Art Center JUMP. Poltava. Ukraine
Achievements
2018 – Scholarship of the President of Ukraine for young artists in the field of fine arts
2016, 2017 – Scholarship of the President of Ukraine (wood carving, National Union of Masters of Folk Art of Ukraine)
Collections
- JUMP Center for Contemporary Art. Poltava
- Artsworld Gallery. Dnipro
- White World Gallery. Kyiv
- Imagine Point Gallery. Kyiv
- Bunkermuz Gallery. Ternopil
- Poltava Art Museum named after M. Yaroshenko
- NVAIR Residence. Travneve
- Residence of the Aura of the City. Starobilsk
- Symposium “Imago Anima”. Trnava. Slovakia
- Private collections
