Gallery Arnelly, in cooperation with Zico House, is presenting an exhibition by the Lebanese-Armenian artist, Sarkis Sicilian, entitled “Metamorphoses”. The exhibition includes portraits of different sizes, the latest produced by the multi-artistic artist in different media. Sicilian was a graduate of the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts – “ALBA”, with a master’s degree in visual arts.
Reflecting on portraiture has always been an issue of concern. This experience is different from others, if we want to compare its effects with the effects of other types of visual arts. The portrait asks questions regarding form, the nature of representation, presence, absence and suffering. This fabric space, often small, is something different from reality itself. As for the implicit psychological presence that surrounds the character, with the ambiguity that can be shrouded in it, it prevents the image from falling into realistic flatness. Note that the realism of portraiture, if it abandons some of the similar obstacles, may, in turn, lead to non-traditional expressive horizons.
The faces of Sarkis Sicilian are different in their connotations, in addition to being brief at times. And if some of them belong to the realm of the auto-portrait, they seem to take on a more general character than a purely personal one connected to the maker. In this field, the represented character is no longer a mere reflection of the characteristics of its owner and the biological features of his face, as the artistic approach to the image requires that we forget the author who made it and his model. A character represents his or her own life, or the life of others, in the small, immobile space of a canvas, photograph, or book, and yet this life often appears to us more real, denser than real life itself. Is the picture drawn, here, a paradoxical subject? When expressing the height of vanity and pride or a return to secondary simplicity. It is truly vanity when the painting is asked only for the sake of flaunting and reaching the deceptive immortality of a frozen self-portrait. How many castles, museums, and town halls display ceremonial and court images that exude sadness, contentment, and boredom?
If the Sicilian characters tend towards feelings that do not meet with each other, clinging to hope at times, and plunging into despair at other times, and ranging from the pursuit of self-development, or their neglect to the point of self-destruction at the same time, they are, in this case, wondering regarding the feasibility of existence and its place. The moving presence, as in the artist’s many images, gathered horizontally on one space, and is in a state of dissolution, is proof of that. The picture can be drawn like any self-portrait, and it can be carved, engraved, photographed, or even written. This can be done for political, social or personal reasons, and we wonder, in all cases, regarding the role of image, representation, and meta-dimensions. The artist can present the physical features of the model, testify to his social affiliation, or attempt to convey the psychological qualities of the individual. It’s all in pictorial art.
On the other hand, some pictures, which are less formal, managed to restore the freshness of expression and the splendor of the meeting. The face of the other presents itself to the recipient as a window into a simple and new scene. The “subject” depicted no longer appears damaged in the tragic isolation of its own mirror, but is transformed through the gaze of the painter and the viewer. Out of the unknown emerges an unknown face, and we witness its second birth: lips, a semi-smile or a frown, two eyes, a look, a forehead, and an idea pulsing with life before us without warning. All these things have become a pure object of contemplation, a tree bearing fruit without you really realizing it.
It is true that Sicilian’s works are limited to exotic faces, but they carry rebellious inner selves through their collision with an unacceptable reality. Cecilia does not paint perfect or complete faces, but rather carries them loud and mysterious feelings, the extent of their dissolution, and the fading of their features, so that these faces become a self-style for staring at a fragile and decaying world surrounding us, as if they are mirrors. Through the diversity of their colors, knowing that the masnochromatic character appears to be dominant in many works, as well as through their features, textures and shapes, these portraits seem as if they are in the process of continuous transformation, as the exhibition title indicates.
It is noted that as contemporary art explores more attempts at iconoclasm, there is a notable return to a classic theme in art history: the portrait. Fabrice Hergot, Chief Curator of the French National Museum, explains that “the choice of the subject of the human face is a reflection of interest in the individual, by way of reaction, while society increasingly resembles a unified world akin to that described by Orwell in his novel 1984.”