ABOUT THE AUTHOR
YURI SHAKHOYAN — AN ARTIST WORKING AT THE INTERSECTION OF ARCHETYPE AND MODERNITY
The work of Yuri Shakhoyan was shaped in the space between eras and cultures: in the multinational Tbilisi of the 1970s, where the colors of festive lanterns reflected in the Kura River. Back then, a ten-year-old boy drew funny portraits of his neighbors on the walls of houses and created panoramas of battles out of plasticine. These early codes — history as texture, and the human face as a field of metamorphosis — found their development in the artist's mature practice.
The master works through a method of transformation at the junction of archetype and modernity. He finds an ancient form: a mask, an ancient balbal, a skull — and embodies in them images brought to life, restoring the lost connection between a person and their original nature. Different forms, but one and the same investigation. Where the boundary lies, when we were not yet ourselves. The artist is known for his mask-faces (liki). These are not portraits, but canvases, where personal history and the eternal are interwoven, where fate and myth intersect.
The mask demands a viewer capable of seeing the inner tension — not only what is manifested, but also what is embedded in the form itself. The face (lik) does not reveal a secret — it invites the beholder into a dialogue. This is an attempt to return to the point before imposition: not nostalgia, but an archaeology of one's own beginning. Shakhoyan works without sketches: the finished objects carry within themselves both the immediacy of improvisation and the eternity of the archetype. At the foundation of his practice is a plastic memory that does not lend itself to stylization.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL LINE OF SHAKHOYAN'S WORKS — A REFLECTION ON THE HUMAN LIMIT
The mask as a face stands at the boundary between life and death. Shakhoyan does not illustrate eternity; he materializes its presence in life, working with materials that bear memory. Ceramics require fire, firing, the transformation of matter. Bronze is born from the alloying of metals, when one form dies and another appears. Wood, stone, clay: everything passes through a stage of renewal in order to become an image.