This Saturday, September 16, curator-lead tours of Rudik Ovsepyan’s ongoing survey exhibition are available between 5 – 9pm. Walkthroughs will take visitors through the various historical and material phases of the works included in the exhibition, which range over nearly five decades. The artist will also be present to provide personal details about the works. The exhibition, Magaxat | Survey (1976 – Present), is on view through September 23. …. A sense of preserving lost or passing time comes clearly into view in Ovsepyan’s “mummified” works, eternally resting between here and hereafter (as with the “Zaun” (or “Fence”) series). These “Zaun” pieces, mummified, like the “Magaxat” works (2005-06), with a waxy, oily green-brown—or, in this case, red—coating, construct a “fence” with the rows of stiffened threads running across embalmed paper. Lines against flesh: after all, a fence is a structure that holds a body (back)—and that is precisely what these works embody. A fence with the body of a mummy. Or, a skin as a fence. After all, we only know time is lost when we find it preserved: an aftermath. The three most recent works in the exhibition, all part of the “Zaun” series, and each titled “Ancient City”, display the aftermath of a massive catastrophe, like an earthquake. With the red piece from this series, a built-up city’s ornamental flares of color and elaborate structures appear coated with a layer of debris and crushed. But the urban order of the central belt is still clearly visible, only strewn with obstacles and collapsing–as if the destruction occurred only moments ago…. Viewed from above, each work presents an “ancient city” at various stages of destruction with the corded, sinewy borders of the frontier squeezing the city shut—or prying it open. A lost city bound by flesh. Economically considered, it seems relevant to consider a quiet critique of consumerism strangely coupled with a celebration of the potential for beauty—and connection—through the power of work, of transforming material with a body (and tracking a body’s transformations with material). Almost all of Ovsepyan’s works created in the United States are made from recycled materials, much of which are collected by his neighbors and brought to him. This serendipitous community collected around his practice through this simple, environmentally conscious activity reveals the relational character emanating from his work. Not only does he construct and deconstruct the semiotic, symbolic, and imaginary relations embedded in societies and exorcised by his works, but he also builds an open social practice bound to the source materials. Regarded as this vortex of relation between bodies, Ovsepyan’s primary medium is the in-between, the gaps between moments in space and time. Consequently, it is ineffectual to consider Ovsepyan’s work through any particular nation-state frame; instead, it is better to find his identity where he encounters himself: at the limit, on the edge of civilization (with a bird’s eye view). .... Image: Rudik Ovsepyan "Ancient City" (Red), 2023 Mixed Media 41" x 35 1/2"