Tsolak Topchyan: Art as Antidote to an Unstable World

2026-01-25 - 21:06

From emerging Armenian artists across the globe to Armenian-American talent in the United States, [Art Speak] spotlights the dynamic and diverse Armenian art world and more. Listen to the AI generated audio article. Your browser does not support the audio element. On November 4, 2025, an important exhibition opened at the Boyajian Gallery of the State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia in downtown Yerevan: Tsolak Topchyan’s The Graphic Art of Unstable Life. Important because this brilliant conceptual artist uses abstraction as a pathway away from political turmoil and personal instability, toward a space of peace and reconciliation. For an Armenian artist—and for Armenians in general—who have weathered so many upheavals since independence from the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Third Republic, his work feels both prescient and deeply necessary. Topchyan’s trademark language consists of minute dots and geometric shapes, reproduced endlessly to create intricate patterns resembling computer-generated printouts. As the exhibition’s curator, Nare Sahakyan, writes: “Topchyan’s work arises from the need to dispel these feelings of constant instability and shock... the often-unnoticed deviations of the human hand intensify the sense of obsession born from unstable reality, reflecting the struggle to preserve order.” Expanding on this, Topchyan notes: “I don’t think my work can be considered palliative or corrective per se. Instead, I suggest strategies of survival in turbulent times.” Themes of time, rhythm, labor, structure and politics are central to his practice. The 12 works presented in the exhibition were completed between 2017 and 2025 and fall into three groups: the Senseless Drawings (Nos. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 15); the Layered Drawings (Nos. 3, 4, and 5)—all on paper; and three large thread-on-canvas pieces (Pink Running Stitch and Pink Dots). The Senseless Drawings (2017; 392 × 542 mm), executed in gel ink on paper, and the Layered Drawings (297 × 420 mm), composed of tracing paper and gel ink, offer exquisite meditations on linearity. The latter are mounted in glass-fronted boxes, lending them a dioramic quality. From the Senseless Drawings series. The three threaded canvases hung from the ceiling like bold, soothing curtains—both physical and psychological thresholds—each approximately 300 × 200 mm. Viewers could weave in and out of them, watching the air lightly stir their surfaces. This playful, interactive element distinguishes Topchyan’s work from decorative Arts and Crafts traditions. As art historian and curator Tamar Hovsepian has observed: “By repeatedly piercing the fabric, Topchyan merges the fibers together, forming grids and circuits, while establishing a radical artistic movement that has no beginning or end. The two sides of the artwork, with pink embroidered dots scattered across the canvas like stars in the sky, mirror each other (Pink Dots, 2023). Yet what is seen on one side remains concealed on the other, highlighting the paradoxical relationship between the visible and the invisible.” The paper works, some simple lines stretching across the page, others nearly filling the entire surface, were rendered in soothing green, blue and pink tones, while the curtains were composed of pink thread on white canvas. The longer one spends with each work, the more their quiet, almost Zen-like magnetism emerges. One could imagine Topchyan leaning over each page or canvas, meticulously dotting and drawing, row after row, thousands of such marks—each a testament to the power of repetition and to the spirit of renewal. From the Senseless Drawings series. Born in 1981 in Gyumri, Topchyan now lives and works in Berlin. A graduate of the Gyumri branch of the State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia, he has exhibited internationally, including solo shows in New York (2023), Brazil (2022), Minsk (2018), and Vienna (2004). His works belong to major private and public collections in Armenia, Austria, France, Germany, the United States and South Korea. He is an artist on the cusp of wider international recognition. Topchyan’s Yerevan exhibition—the first in the Academy of Fine Arts’ “Academy Alumni” series made full use of the Boyajian Gallery’s intimate space. Similar works appeared in Topchyan’s 2023 New York debut, Universal Pink, presented in Atamian Hovsepian’s expansive 1,000-square-foot space. There, the works floated impressively, accompanied by over one hundred rectangular, bubble gum–like objects arranged in double rows on the wall. At the Boyajian Gallery, the works appeared more discrete, gentle whispers rather than proclamations, but no less powerful. Topchyan’s work also gestures toward the Derridean notion of the trace and the idea that meaning emerges through difference and deferral, rather than through fixed or singular interpretation. Out of this interplay of sameness and difference arises a subtle sense of the unheimlich—the uncanny—echoes of things seen before, almost but not quite the same. As Sahakyan notes: “In this way, the artist multiplies the surface of his work, transforming the trace he leaves behind into a rhythm that heals the instability of life.” In an increasingly digitized and homogenized world, Topchyan deftly manipulates our perceptions of repetition and variation, offering a quietly radical demonstration of how art can participate in the phoenix-like renewal of a society. N.B.: This exhibition was made possible through the support of Atamian Hovsepian Curatorial Practice, which continues to provide emerging curators with opportunities to realize meaningful exhibitions, introduce significant international and local artists, and cultivate new audiences for contemporary conceptual art. Christopher Atamian Atamian’s work can be read in leading publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Huffington Post, The Brooklyn Rail, the New Criterion and Hyperallergic. He is the former dance critic for The New York Press and Publisher of KGB Magazine. He has also contributed to The Harpy Hybrid Review, AUB’s Rusted Radishes, and the Beirut Daily Star. He also wrote regularly for AIM Magazine, The Armenian Reporter, and Ararat Magazine. Atamian is the co-founder and curator of Atamian Hovsepian Curatorial Project, an international undertaking with gallery spaces in New York City and Yerevan. To date he has authored and translated seven books and translations from Western Armenian and French; and has written and directed films that have screened at the Venice Biennale and film festivals internationally. An alumnus of Harvard University, USC Film School and Columbia Business School, Christopher studied on a Fulbright Scholarship at the ETH Zürich. He has been the recipient of two Tölölyan Literary Prizes, a 2015 Ellis Island Medal of Honor and been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Instagram: @christopheratamian See all [Art Speak] articles here Comment