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It’s been said that one has to experience the darkness of despair in order to fully appreciate the bright light of joy. Perhaps this was in the back of the curator’s mind when arranging the paintings of Rima Mardoyan of Sag Harbor at Guild Hall Museum.
One half of the East Hampton museum’s Woodhouse Gallery features dark paintings in two series aptly titled “Turbulence” and “Genocide.” The other half contains pieces from the “Traveling Fish” series, in which light blues swirl and mingle with shades of white and other light colors.
The works are part of the solo exhibition, “Rima Mardoyan: Survey of Encaustic Works,” on view through November 30. Ms. Mardoyan was awarded a solo show at Guild Hall after winning Best in Show at the 2005 Artist Members Exhibition. The winner of the 2006 Artist Members Best in Show honors, Jane Martin, will have her solo show at the museum immediately following Ms. Mardoyan’s, from December 6 to January 18, 2009.
For Ms. Mardoyan, all of the series, the result of intensive research and hours upon hours of reading, are equally intense. The topics and investigations Ms. Mardoyan engaged in were dark: following the September 11th terrorist attacks, she began musing on the sudden and unpredictable nature of violence.
Likening the destructive acts of man to the devastation sometimes wrought by Mother Nature, the “Turbulence” series followed paintings made in response to the falling of the Twin Towers. Like the paintings that conjure smoke twisting into the sky, the burning buildings and the sooty blackness and death of that terrible day, the “Turbulence” paintings also evoke the power of destruction and the colors that come with it.
All of the paintings in the solo show—no matter which series they come from—are made using beeswax and have a surface sheen. The artist’s encaustic medium calls for molten beeswax to be mixed with pigments to create vibrant color and texture. Through the years, Ms. Mardoyan has developed her own technique to create a special blend of her own. Special brushes and metal tools are used to apply the heated wax before it cools and sets.
The paintings she makes are abstract but Ms. Mardoyan prefers to describe them as deconstructive. The word more typically describes the way a literary work is stripped of its components to discover its essence. When she works, Ms. Mardoyan starts with a photograph or image and then makes it her own by “un-building” the identifiable components to create something that harks back to the original shape but is transformed into swirls of color that conjure emotion.
“Even though some of the subjects I’m dealing with are ugly, my paintings are beautiful,” she said. “I want people to take the paintings home and live with them. If they just hear the story, that’s enough. They don’t have to actually deal with it. At least someone will be thinking about it and talking about it.”
Some of the subjects Ms. Mardoyan explores reveal the darkest side of humanity: violence, war and genocide (in Darfur and Rwanda) and the broken lives left behind. Immersing herself day after day in the horrors taking place across the globe was Ms. Mardoyan’s way of bearing witness, honoring the loss of life, and acknowledging that tragedies are taking place right now. The stress was sometimes immense—she paints every day and read piles and piles of books on genocide—yet she continued over a span of four years to create a substantial body of work.
“I got so moved when I saw some of the photographs,” she said. “No one cares for them. I’m not a political activist and I’m not going to fly over to their countries to try and stop it. I can paint it. I hope it makes someone think that we have to care and know what’s happening to innocent people. No one does anything because these countries don’t have opportunities or political advantages to offer: it just people killing each other.”
After spending seven years on her journey from the September 11th paintings through “Turbulence” and “Genocide,” the work seemed complete. Ms. Mardoyan then turned to the poetry of the 13th century poet and theologian Rumi for her latest pieces: the Traveling series. Moved by the line, “We are the space between the fish and the moon,” Ms. Mardoyan made two distinct groups of paintings. One is based on the travels of a small fish in an enormous ocean.
The other depicts a tiny pig who, myth tells us, traveled across the Alps with the Carthaginian military commander Hannibal to triumph over the Romans in the Second Punic War (218-202). The pig was only one type of creature in the animal caravan, but there was something about its short, stumpy legs and the hardships it would have had to endure with a willing heart that moved Ms. Mardoyan.
The Traveling Pig paintings are rendered in dark colors and shades with the pig’s silhouette forming the brightness of the paintings. The Traveling Fish paintings are made of blues and light colors that seem to swirl with motion. All of the Traveling paintings focus on the brighter side of life and the optimism that arises when dark times become a thing of the past. The paintings also ruminate on how small we are, as humans, in the spatial and spiritual scheme of the universe.
Ms. Mardoyan said the paintings do not draw the conclusion that good triumphs over evil or even follows in its wake. Instead, the paintings are meant to suggest that goodness and peaceful coexistence can be a destination that we travel toward. Whether or not the goal is realized is a discussion for another day.
“The idea is that we can do something toward improvement,” she said. “I’m telling abstract stories with my paintings.”
Looking around at the paintings in her solo show at Guild Hall, Ms. Mardoyan said that she feels lucky. A native of Iran, she is thankful she doesn’t live in the war-torn countries she spent so much time studying and examining, and her life in Sag Harbor has been good.
“I’m happy,” she said simply.
“Rima Mardoyan: A Survey of Encaustic Works” is on view through November 30 at Guild Hall’s Woodhouse Gallery, 158 Main Street, East Hampton. The museum is open Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.; call 324-0806 for more information.
on Nov 23, 2008