The exhibition « Eye on the City » consists of a selection of oil paintings, screens and sculptures from the late 1990s up to the early 2000s. The candid eye of an adolescent follows characters evolving in an urban environment. The imagination, this infinity, finds itself confronted to the preestablished limits of society. The adolescent opens the door towards a circumscribed space which will never close again. This is one of the major preoccupations of the work of Jean Kazandjian. The adolescent represents awakening consciousness. Its stare which is facing us creates a reflection with the observer, implying the voyeur from inside the work.
Not tied to a single form of expression or a dominant art movement, Jean Kazandjian embraced the freedom of his own visual journey while living in Paris from 1963 to 2000. Since moving to Southern California, the interplay of surrealism and popular culture has become an ongoing part of his work. Image deconstruction, zoom effect, sequences, kinetic aspect are as many references to the image industry that is Hollywood. But if the artist uses some of its dynamic process, it is to create a world where he shows the arrogant superficiality of images which surround us, bringing thus a critical vision on Western society.
Kazandjian’s collectors span the globe and his work has been shown widely in Europe, the U.S.A, Canada and Japan. Both in public institutions such as The Brooklyn Museum, New-York, Musée de l’Athénée, Geneva, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Musée du Surréalisme, Melun, Sursock Museum, Beirut and private galleries such as Galerie Jeanne in Munich, Galerie d’Orsay in Boston, Galerie Furstenberg in Paris and Galerie Anais in Los Angeles. The artist currently lives and works in Venice, California.
The exhibition is accompanied by a 320–page, fully illustrated book with an original cover designed by Kazandjian and a foreword written by Gloria Orenstein, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. This book contains his body of work from the last ten years.
Galerie AV is dedicated to the work of the French-american artist Jean Kazandjian. Each first Thursday of the month, starting at 6:30pm, you can discover a new selection showing new aspects of the artist's work.
