Photo exhibition of Arshak Hovhannisyan. Contrauma promenade

Arshak Hovhannisyan fully embodies the aphorism: “Style is a man”! After all, only style is that one and only feature that distinguishes a person from other people.

Even a fleeting glance at any of Arshak’s photographs is enough to be inspired by his style, moreover, to see the author. Dynamic, fast, fluid like mercury. “All the time I move forward, climbing to the top, the end of which I do not see. I’m constantly learning, learning from young people, from masters, learning everything that interests me, but I’m interested in a lot: my friend’s joy, the pain of a passerby, a lonely pigeon cowering in the corner of the transition on a frosty day. ”

It is from here that Arshak’s subtle and touching love for specific “photo details”: a couple of “amblers,” at the Voskresensky Gate passage, a photographer almost disappeared in the mirrors of voluminous letters, and a Dutch house on a glass near the shy “Chess Player”. The usual examination of works involves, delays, and forces us to search for more and more “lost” and hidden, perhaps, objects from the author himself. It is like a mirror maze in which imaginary images and reflections mix with the true ones.

Even on those frames where physically there are no mirrors, there are still. For example, “A Country Without”: a red-and-white mirror barrier rhythm, mirror inscriptions on flags, mirror movement of a human stream and wind. A very characteristic reminder for Arshak that exclusively mind moves in our world.

However, the author’s method is most clearly manifested in the work “Leap”. On it - the author himself is simultaneously noticeable and inconspicuous, static, like a photographic “click”, but around which a spiral is curved like a jump, instantaneous, like an inept dance street dance. The clash of color and colorless, transient and unchanging, forward movement and oncoming movement.

Arshak Hovhannisyan, artist, photographer
Born in 1950 in Yerevan

1961-1969. Studying at the Art secondary school No. 50 of Moscow, a draft in the Soviet Army.
1966. The first camera of the brand "Vigilant".
1969-1971. Service regimental artist and design of the regiment, the garrison, Lenin rooms of the "backward" regiments.
1973. Work in Mosproekt-4, CHAPTER of Moscow. Participation in the design of a new theater on Taganka, in collaboration with architects Alexander Anisimov, Yuri Gnedovsky.
1975-1976. Work as an artist-designer of the plant Trekhgornaya manufactory.
1976-1981. Studying at the Moscow Institute of National Economy named after Plekhanov. Faculty of Trade and Economics, specialization "catering economics". During his studies, he became interested in caricature, together with his friends organized the Moscow club of cartoonists at the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets.
1977. Laureate of the international exhibition of cartoons in Gabrovo. Published over 200 cartoons.
1981-1984. Work as the deputy director of the canteen of the First Medical Institute.
1989. Recruited to the Smena magazine as an art editor.
1991-1995. Artist of the weekly Interlocutor. Art director of the Center Plus publishing house, the newspaper Evening Moscow.
2008-2009. Art Director of FLY & DRIVE Magazine, Za Rulem Publishing House.