Wandering Solitude: David Martirosyan

Overview
David Martirosyan Beyaz Sandalye / White Chair, 2022 Tuval üzerine yağlıboya / Oil on canvas 130 x 100 cm
David Martirosyan
Beyaz Sandalye / White Chair, 2022
Tuval üzerine yağlıboya / Oil on canvas
130 x 100 cm
David Martirosyan is, above all, interested in the human being and its very nature. The hopeless existential solitude of the individual is the core subject of his reflections. This sentiment is palpable even in his landscapes or still lifes, where the figure of a person is absent yet ever-present in essence. It is evident that the artist is well-versed in philosophy and art history, yet he processes this knowledge through a distinct intellectual filter, shaping his own unique visual language.
 
Despite the strong photographic quality present in his pieces, Martirosyan’s work does not align with photorealistic painting. True, he often deliberately uses his own photographs, employing the photographic lens’s ability to “see” in a way distinct from the human eye—playing with sharp contrasts of light and shadow or the heightened chromatic intensity characteristic of color photography. However, in his artistic process, he subjects these images to numerous compositional transformations. His choice of a highly expressive painterly approach—marked by bold, rhythmic, and textured brushstrokes—imbues these images with an additional emotional charge.
 
Although the artist’s works do not follow a conventional narrative sequence typical of a series, they are conceptually interconnected. Certain human figures recur throughout his works, yet they rarely meet the viewer’s gaze. Instead, they remain fixated on a point beyond the canvas. Often, they are seen walking away with their backs turned, wandering down empty streets or alleys, sometimes standing alone on the edge of an open field or before an impenetrable thicket in a dense forest. At first glance, this artistic technique might seem unsettling, even enigmatic, but it serves to heighten the underlying theme of existential solitude.
 
David Martirosyan has a keen ability to extract and isolate the essential from the mundane, gently guiding the viewer’s attention toward the forgotten origins of human nature, buried beneath the automated rituals of daily life.
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