By J.M. Belmont, Artscope Nov/Dec 2024
Can you believe what you see, especially when it comes to yourself? In a digital world saturated with artificially generated imagery and where the polished unreality of social media is paramount, life becomes an interminable sequence of double takes. Our perspectives of ourselves are as manicured as our presentations to others, leading to a confusion of identity as the public overruns the private.
The Armenian Museum of America addresses this contradictory reality with “Filtered Identity: The Art of Tigran Tsitoghdzyan.” Though Tsitoghdzyan’s works aren’t digital creations, one could be forgiven for thinking so. What at first appears to be a show of large-scale photographs is in actuality a collection of hyper-realistic paintings.
In his 13-piece exhibition, Tsitoghdzyan asks us “to confront the tension between who we are and how we are seen.” Divided into two sections, “Mirror” and “Self-Isolation,” “Filtered Identity” surveys the past five years of his painting career: the former focusing on “the duality of self-presentation;” the latter a reaction to the early Covid-19 lockdowns.
Each painting takes on a different woman as its subject. These oversized works hang in the museum’s third floor gallery, the large space giving room for each human-size canvas to breathe. In them, Tsitoghdzyan’s subjects show as much as they conceal, appearing both duplicitous and authentic.
Standing at 84” x 60”, the paintings in “Mirror” show seven women in profile, their hands superimposed over their faces. A vertical line formed by the outer edges of their touching hands bisect the lips and nose, both splitting each woman in two and hiding them. The translucent nature gives an evasive, haunted feeling.
The concept arrived with the selfie. “What is this about? All my friends, female especially, started posting selfies every day,” said Tsitoghdzyan. “I was very into portraiture and the self-portrait was reserved for a few great masters like Rembrandt and others.
““The strength of Tigran Tsitoghdzyan’s technique is that he allows the human to be seen. We see the subjects’ emotional and physical inner workings, along with the artist’s own craft: Photogenic perfection from a distance; layered brush strokes and psychological contradiction up-close. It’s as masterful as it is discomforting.”
“The filters were so important that I was thinking that, as a contemporary artist, I should start painting all my friends and everyone I know around me the way they want to be seen by the others.”
In “Mirror I,” 2024, one of the show’s five mixed media on paper works, Tsitoghdzyan has added a maze of interlocking Cocteau-esque drawings — the silver faces, hands and spirals appear and vanish depending on the viewers vantage point.
“Mirror A,” oil on canvas, does away with the fluid linework, leaving the viewer to take in the intricacy of Tsitoghdzyan’s craft. With a rich grayscale tone, he captures his subject’s penetrating eyes and the imperfections of her skin. Within the glassy reflection of her pupils, one can see the artist at work.
Across the gallery, in the works making up “Self-Isolation,” the viewer is confronted with four nude women in both physical and psychological struggle. These canvases, each 80” x 80,” have the effect of
Mirror Metamorphosis Reimagined I, 2022, mixed media on paper, 40” x 40”
a photographic double — sometimes triple or quadruple — exposure. Each subject is seated in contorted states of frustration and boredom. The bottom fourth of the canvas, the floor, is an ink-black bar on which Tsitoghdzyan’s brilliantly rendered women pose.
“Self-Isolation 10,” 2024, shows Tsitoghdzyan’s attention to detail in its extreme, with him perfectly reproducing the small talismanic tattoos on the subject’s fingers and wrists multiple times and in varying positions.
One of the most exciting pieces in the exhibition is “Self-Isolation 6,” 2024. Posed side view, the woman’s overlapping legs create a Cubists effect, while her glossy painted fingernails are offset by the photorealistic texture of her cracked heels. The viewer can easily feel the “tension between personal space and societal expectations” Tsitoghdzyan set out to replicate in the lingering days of the pandemic.
Hung midway, opposing each other across the gallery, are two works that bridge the series together.
“Mirror Metamorphosis Reimagined I,” (and “II”), 2022, mixed media on paper, are both 40” x 40,” but their relatively smaller scale doesn’t stop them from being the exhibition’s most successful pieces. Both focus on their subjects from the shoulders up, employing the “exposure” style present in “Self-Isolation.” Added are “Mirror’s” silver inked sketches, creating an effect akin to sliding a Snapchat filter over an identity crisis.
The strength of Tsitoghdzyan’s technique is that he allows the human to be seen. We see the subjects’ emotional and physical inner workings, along with the artist’s own craft: Photogenic perfection from a distance; layered brush strokes and psychological contradiction up-close. It’s as masterful as it is discomforting.
“Filtered Identity: The Art of Tigran Tsitoghdzyan” will be on view at the Armenian Museum of America through February 23, 2025. When visiting, take the time to view the museum’s thorough chronicle of the Armenian Genocide and its celebratory collection of Armenian art and culture.
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