Blue Cathedrals
Hratch Israelian
Trinity in White
Artist’s Statement
“What is Modern Art?” A question that puzzles many of us. In the name of modern art, artists tried everything and it’s opposite; creating more questions than answers. Can we find our answer in the digital world? Since digital sculpting unfolds a technical renaissance around us. How about digital Painting? In digital world higher quality picture means a larger digital file and a larger digital file means slow traffic. It’s obvious that speed, size, and quality cancel each other out, even in digital images. What does all this have to do with Modern art? Modern Art came out of Modernity, and Modernity came out of technological transformations, which stands on the balance of four pillars: production speed, quality, cost, and size. Can we create the modern brush for modern painting? A brush that has the essence of Modernism? A painting process which produce maximum speed, size and quality, with minimal cost and labor? Something that cameras and computers have not yet achieved? Yes, we can. You are looking at it.
about the artist
Hratch Israelian was born June 7, 1956, in Yerevan, Armenia (former USSR). He is an Armenian American artist, inventor, writer and animator. He introduced the most efficient and democratic process of painting to the art world. In 1972, he laid down the foundation for a new painting process that manually produces maximum speed, size and quality, with minimal cost and labor. His work identified with Soviet Nonconformist Art. Soviet art circles considered his new method as a new painting style and its significant potentials were ignored. In 1980, Israelian emigrated to the United States and the Ministry of Culture of the USSR gave official permission to Export 115 of his paintings which went through intense scrutiny for possible espionage.
The paintings Israelian created in the 1970s have been in contact with the turning points of modern history, but they remain ignored. His personal talents and skills are not in question here. Israelian’s art is about other people’s infinite imagination and hidden talents, and his job is to make the painting process easy and affordable so everyone can try. From 1996 Israelian started writing an epic poem, called "Bread and Wine.” From 2002, Israelian worked on the staging of his epic poem through 3D animation by creating all 100 characters as high-resolution digital sculptures.