Armen Agop

"Simplicity is very complicated."

"New is a very old word."

"I don't work, I either play or pray."

"I believe that all art is playing seriously."

"The only prison is myself."

"It was in the desert, where there seems to be nothing, that's where I learned to see."

"An artwork is a container of a human experience. A poem in a closed book is contained energy, ready for whoever reads it, wanting to be charged. Art is able to energize a part of us that is usually ignored. In my experience, the artworks that touch us deeply and manage to connect with us are artworks that have a rich internal world and vital inner connectivity with themselves. The hard part is the ability to detect it because it’s not about the obvious elements in an artwork; most of the time, it is about what is beneath that which is evident. It’s the unseen, the invisible. I believe that the appearance of the artwork is a big obstacle. We call it visual art but it’s all about the invisible."

"In front of every blank canvas or paper, I face nothingness. What breaks it is the desire of doing. With each blank paper, there is a new unknown to explore, a nothingness to go through. By doing it more and more, a hidden part of me is unveiled. After some time, it isn’t about me anymore but about the whole universe. By exploring my nature, I explore the universe’s nature. We are one. Each painting is a cosmic one, even if it’s a failure. When I make a painting, the painting makes me too."

"Nevertheless, the answers remain innumerable and the sculptures seem different to the eyes of each beholder. Next to a drop of darkness that widens across the page of life may appear a meteorite radiated by cosmic waves, while the black disk of a pendulum keeps on reminding us of the inexorable flow of time. All this is seen through the fascinating kaleidoscope of Armen's art that projects images on images in an implacable vortex of stimuli. No single analysis is considered definitive because, as it happens for the hermetic poetries, in front of the sculptures of Armen an interpretation is tied intrinsically to the sensibility of the observer."

"Each work may be considered as a contemporary microcosm, unnamed, self-referential, but rich of past and present identity, still tied to previous work but announcing the forthcoming one, which enables the viewer to participate in the discovery of his inner energy, sharing in the identity."

"These sculptures are not altars but mirrors of the viewer's soul."

"Defying the ego, Armen Agop releases his works into the world detaching himself from them. For him, the man, it's all about the process, and for the stone, it's about endurance. Perhaps, his works can be regarded as contemporary conduits for the Ka, rare portals of communication between the incorporeal and the terrestrial realm. Created in time, they are meant to resist time, vibrating within their own frequencies as an undying ode to life."