WATERTOWN — A crowd of Armenian and non-Armenian guests filled the third floor Armenian Museum of America galleries in Watertown to view the oversized artworks of Tigran Tsitoghdzyan during the September 19 opening night of his show “Filtered Identity: The Art of Tigran Tsitoghdzyan,” curated by artist and educator Ryann Casey.
Executive Director Jason Sohigian of the Armenian Museum provided a brief introduction to Tsitoghdzyan and his photograph-like hyper-realistic art. He said that this prominent artist first came to his attention due to social media posts a few years ago. Based in New York, he also has a studio in Yerevan. Sohigian said that he is so popular an artist that up to 1,000 people stream in to visit on a single day when he opens up the Yerevan gallery to the public on Saturdays.
Born in Armenia in 1976, Tsitoghdzyan as a child worked with guidance from art critic Henrikh Igityan, who established what may have been the world’s first children’s art gallery in 1970. Sohigian asked Armenian Museums Collections Curator Gary Lind-Sinanian about Igityan, and the latter replied that Igityan curated a show of children’s art years ago at the Armenian Museum, so it is possible that Tsitoghdzyan’s works may have been included in it.
Sohigian also noted that the model for one of the paintings on display was present that evening (he did not point her out, leaving the audience to try to identify her later), another artwork was of an Armenian, and a third of a well-known celebrity.
Tsitoghdzyan had come from New York City, where he has been living for some 15 years, for the opening. He took the microphone to speak about the two series of his recent artworks on display, “Mirrors” and “Self-Isolation.” He recalled that the custom of taking “selfies” with cellphones, which seemed to have become ubiquitous among women in particular, inspired the “Mirrors” series. He said that portraits until then seemed a bit old-fashioned, but that he took up the idea, with some influence from classical art, in particular Renaissance artists and later painters like Rembrandt. His paintings examine the relationships between self and image, and reality and beauty.
Tsitoghdzyan said he was fascinated with the Armenian concept of “jagadakir,” or fate, which literally means writing which is on the forehead. That led him in one painting, “Vanity Mirror,” to add inside the lines, swirls and outlines of faces and hands which imperceptibly surround the actual portrait various words written in the Armenian alphabet.