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The Cafesjian Center for the Arts announces the opening of the exhibition, Leo Leo Vardanyan: Traces on March 4 in Gallery One of the Center, for the first time presenting a significant series from the artist’s recent oeuvre.

Leo Leo Vardanyan is an abstractionist artist working with varied techniques and media, sometimes applying multimedia approach as well. In his recent works the artist has examined the relation of varied physical dimensions, gravitations and vibrations of different layers (this is how the artist calls it himself).

In the Traces series this relation with varied surfaces is taken to another level, where the creation of the image is more free and seemingly uncontrolled; the author’s impact on the process is minimized to an extent that it seems entirely spontaneous.

The artist created special conditions and environment for the Traces series, when fire flames and jets swallowed the canvas on the stretcher attached to the fiberboard, thus leaving abstract images and traces on the latter. Initially created for a video art piece, it has developed into a separate series, becoming derivative to the mentioned video artwork.

With this exhibition CCA also launches the project Tabula Rasa. The aim is to use the clear and blank wall of Gallery One, realizing different exhibitions and experimental projects. Tabula Rasa (Latin translation: "blank slate") is a term that derives from Greek Philosophy: in epistemological and psychological context, the theory offers that individuals are born without built-in mental content like a blank slate/board, and therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. In this context, it is indeed symbolic to start the project with Leo Leo Vardanyan’s Traces, where real blank boards are literally charged with new layers and meanings.

“Using flame, air and substance from the elements of nature (without which there is no burning), the artist renders fire not only as a means of destruction, but also purification, a new beginning”,- states Vahagn Marabyan, the Acting Executive Director of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts.

Leo Leo Vardanyan: Traces exhibition will last from March 4 to May 29, 2022. The entrance is free of charge.