DUBAI.- Meem Gallery is presenting the first solo exhibition in the UAE with celebrated Egyptian Armenian artist, Armen Agop (b.1969, Cairo).

The artist, based in Italy since 2000, is well known internationally for his black granite sculptures; having exhibited with regularity through Europe, the Arab World and Asia. In this upcoming exhibition, Mantra, audiences will be able to view his drawings and paintings for the first time, alongside his sculptural works.

The title of this multidisciplinary exhibition, Mantra reflects the nature of the work within this series, as physical documentation of a meditative, spiritual practice. Each artwork is undertaken with a focus, a mantra, set by the artist, created by a repeated action. Choosing one of the smallest elements, the ‘point’, and applying it over and over, the artist seeks to discover its limitless potential and to reach profound experiences.

The sculpting of granite is a grueling and lengthy task. The manifold, repetitive movements become an almost meditative process. Through the carving, grinding and perpetual shaping of the material, this ruminative practice is undertaken, in contrast, the drawings and paintings, deliver a divergence in concept. In the works on paper and canvas, it is the meditative process itself that unveils the composition through Agop’s mark-making with the paintings manifesting as a result of the duration of time and rituality.

The paintings themselves have a luminous, ethereal quality. At first glance, they resemble the inherent monumentality of the artist’s sculptural work – large, black expanses of space. Upon closer inspection, the works open up to reveal a collection of points in colourful hues, lightly and purposefully placed upon the canvas, cosmic-like in their composition. There is a softness to the works on canvas in contrast to the strong sculptural works of the same subject matter.

For this exhibition, the artist renounces any skill in painting or drawing to adopt a gestural mantra in following the instinctive desire of doing without a message. Using the smallest possible pen tip, 0.1, and believing in the strength of a single point, he repeats it endlessly with a ritual, sober gesture. The notions of time, labor, and ritual are rethought, in a pure act of processing time. Therefore, the paintings are the materialisation of the duration of time, by experiencing endlessness, mantra becomes the matter.

Agop’s works are marked by his idea of a complete synergy of mind, body and spirit. He works with basic, elemental entities such as a line or a point and observes them relentlessly until he sees a new way of being. He describes this obsessive process as a meditative practice, a ritual which seeks an internal cosmos. The artist’s sculptures appear like futuristic beings or UFOs, and at the same time, remind one of the soberness of ancient Egyptian art in its powerful lines and simple forms. Each contains these diverse aspects of the broad time horizon as Agop introduces us to the internal juxtaposition that is palpable in each work.