Argišt Alaverdyan (*1991) was born in Armenia, but has lived in the Czech Republic since he was two years old. In 2017 he graduated from the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, where he passed through several painting studios. In his paintings created in recent years, he has focused on the new technologies that are changing our lives from the ground up, such as robotization and digitization, as this exhibition demonstrates. It reflects the world that takes place on the monitors and screens of computers, tablets, and mobile phones; the world which is increasingly becoming a substitute for the real world. Monitors represent the interface between the virtual realm of computer codes, which can only be grasped by reason, and the material realm perceived by the senses. They are part of both: on the one hand, as a medium producing various combinations of static and moving images and texts, on the other hand, as a material artifact that has a specific material character and even, which is significant from the painterly point of view, certain optical properties, especially its characteristic cool light. For both of these reasons, they are therefore legitimate subjects for painting, although the nature of the two media could not be more different. In the logic of progress, it would seem that the digital image is superior to the painted one: it can reproduce it, morph it, and generate a new one in a similar style... But the same is true here as it was once true for photography or film: while digitization affects contemporary visuality, and hence the painted image, in various ways, it is far from being the end of it. Classical painting, as a tool that our civilization has developed to better understand our universe, is capable of embracing its digital extension. Alaverdyan’s latest Entity cycle proves this. It is on this term that the relationship of the worlds “before” and “behind” the monitor, their parallel character, can be nicely demonstrated.

“Entity” is originally a concept from ontology, a branch of philosophy that – in simplified terms – pursues how to understand existence in its various forms, i.e. precisely entities. In a similar sense, both terms – ontology and entity – have been transferred into programming theory. In the title of the Cheb exhibition, however, the word “entity” is added to the term “identity.” This pun suggests that Alaverdyan focuses on a single particular theme this time – the representation of the human face. Several interesting moments appear here. In relation to painting, the artist touches upon the classical genre of portraiture, and in relation to digital technologies, he thematizes the various applications that deal with the processing of human faces. These allow us to play all sorts of games, for example to distort our looks as in a crooked mirror or to grow old instantly, and their plethora corresponds to the formal variety of his paintings, executed in a smooth, impersonal brushwork. On the other hand, there are facial-recognition programs that can keep one under constant scrutiny, and this context is less funny. The two works with the motif of a lens, painted on aluminum base and adjusted on a filming bracket, which complete the IdEntity cycle in the exhibition, refer to this. Alaverdyan here touches upon a crucial issue, linked from the beginning to the environment of the Internet and new technologies: the issue of freedom or, respectively, its regulation. It seems that we are now at a point where we will have to answer these difficult questions – even though there is no clearly satisfactory answer. The relevance and topicality of Alaverdyan’s paintings is not in the contemporary issues, but precisely in the fact that they also contain this critical and disturbing aspect.

Marcel Fišer

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