The shape of things to come

Visual artist Zareh said he doesn’t ponder too much before starting

to paint or draw. He just goes with what feels natural. At first

glance, the recurring shapes in his work, like fish, leaves and

circles, seem basic but his message is complex.

“What he can’t say aloud, he’s trying to say in his pictures,”

said Gayane Galustyan, curator for Harvest Gallery, which is

exhibiting 36 of Zareh’s acrylic paintings, drawings and

three-dimensional mixed media until Sept. 27. “All his works are very

simple, but at the same time, they have depth. Every piece makes you

think.”

Zareh, a resident of Glendale, uses simple shapes found everyday

in nature to convey his feelings about the relationship humans have

with the world as natural beings. Frequent in his Harvest Gallery

installation is the use of leaves and fish. The vein of a leaf is not

so different from the cross section of a fish, exposing its bones,

Zareh said. Their shapes are also similar to one another and relate

to life, he said, because the beginning and the ending are not the

same.

“So nature has prepared in its own best way, the construction of

living things in this world,” he said.

One of Zareh’s untitled canvases illustrates this through a human

portrait. Zareh drew a leaf for an eyebrow, its stem curving down to

become the nose. The other eyebrow is a fish, the same size and shape

as the leaf across from it. V’s and circles were drawn in as hair.

Text on the canvas reads “real ingredients.”

“I think he’s very socially conscious,” said Ramela Grigorian

Abbamontian, an art historian at UCLA who is including Zareh’s work

in her dissertation on Armenian artists in Los Angeles. “He responds

as a human being living in this globalized age.”

Zareh’s piece “Gray Flights” depicts his thoughts of Britain’s

political history and the recent London bombings. But he is careful

to leave most of the interpretation up to the viewer. He manipulates

a British flag with gray circles of paint that could be bombs or

clouds, he said. And he divides the flag by painting a horizontal

zig-zag line through it.

“I’m showing that things are changing at this time in London,” he

said.

Change is a constant theme in his work, illustrating the

continuous flux of nature and life.

“I have a stable character but we are all living together -- me,

you and trees and leaves,” he said. “Some things are changing slowly,

some faster, but they are all changing.”

With one untitled canvas, he began the art by repetitively drawing

lines in pencil, which eventually turned into tallies illustrating

time.

“Intervals show the passing of time and distance because without

intervals, we cannot show the passing of time,” he said.

But one ending can be another beginning, Galustyan said, and

Zareh’s work states that everything in this world is relative. Shapes

like V’s, and dots are recurring in the exhibit and act as symbols.

Two V’s together could symbolize a bird, yet they could mean

something else in another piece.

Zareh refrains from defining symbols specifically in his art and

chose not to title most of the works.

By being somewhat elusive, Abbamontian said Zareh is able to more

actively engage the viewer. Viewers become conscious of the shapes

and will begin to notice them in each piece.

“That’s visual dialogue,” she said. “You’re thinking, ‘What are

these forms that I’m looking at and why do they keep coming up on

these canvases?’”

Viewers then become familiar with his style, noticing patterns in

the symbols and are challenged to interpret them on their own,

Abbamontian said.

FYI

WHAT: Exhibition by artist Zareh

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday until Sept. 27

WHERE: Harvest Gallery, 938 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale

CONTACT: (818) 546-1000