Ab-Anbar is pleased to present the exhibition "Sirak Melkonian Seven Decades of painting" by Toronto based artist Sirak Melkonian.
This project is collaboration between Ab/Anbar and Aria Gallery and brings together Melkonian's artworks throughout his professional career, from 50's to present.
From Arya Gallery to Ab-Anbar space, we see sixty years of creation by an artist, who through producing artworks for more than half a century, has come to represent an art movement at the turn of the century across modern Iranian society. Throughout this long journey, some elements of Iranian painting (that suggest meaning) are eliminated to lead us to the last period of his artistic career (tissues), where we discover that Sirak Melkonian was a self-aware painter whose knowledge of the world of abstraction led him to a subconscious exploration.
This is a retrospective exhibition that highlights the evolution and achievements of Iranian contemporary painting during a critical period in history.[…]
The nature of such a painting, if not branded as irreligious, was divine. Shadows had become a single unity, engulfing climatic atmosphere of all canvases and papers.[…]
Although Iranian art critics - similar to Iran’s history of Armenian artists – have always been blind to Sirak Melkonian’s legacy, a review of his artistic career, from the basement of Arya Gallery to Ab-Anbar Contemporary Art Center, reveals that after him, no one can trespass to the territory that he defined.