Offenbach

GRIGORI OFFENBACH, one of the founding members of the Bunker Art Group. Since 1978 he organized and participated in modern art exhibitions. Grigori played important role in the creation of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Yerevan, assisting Henrikh Igityan. Offenbach is an artist who constantly experiments and creates new styles and techniques in painting and graphics.

GriGori offenbaCh

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GRIGORI OFFENBACH, the one original Bunker member still in the former Soviet Union, lives and works in Moscow. The works representing him here, dating from the early 1990s, maintain Bunker’s original commitment to non-objectivity and expand upon painterly practices earlier prevalent in the West – and in this case, the Far East. Offenbach employs a kind of liberated but still choreographed calligraphic line, one that darts, whiplashes, and fractures across what seems to be multi-planar backgrounds, all the result of painting first with a broad stroke, then with a very fine one, and finally with a pointed tool that “carves” into the original marks. The manner recalls the approaches of German tachistes K.R.H. Sonderborg and Karl-Otto Götz, but also that of any number of painters working in the 1950s and ‘60s primarily in Japan and Taiwan. In other words, Offenbach’s style is deliberately and self-consciously international, speaking to concepts far removed from his own location. This style relies on a refinement of the gesture through mark-making of a seemingly notational, even linguistic kind. Such a quality is heightened by the artist’s spare use of color; he favors a gray scale, enhancing the graphic and even alphabetic inferences of his painting. Offenbach’s Bunker compeers all tend to work with a reduced palette, but in his case it has an almost writerly presence.

by Peter Frank

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i alwayS loved to See what iS on the baCk Side of the Coin

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“We had three Grigors among our friends”, Grigor Offenbach began his story of how an Armenian artist wound up with the name of a famous French operetta composer. “One of us got a nickname, Kiki, then another Grigor became Mr. X, but somehow nobody could come up with a proper nickname for me. They tried many times but in vain. Then we all happened to be watching a popular movie called The Republic of ShKID where there's an evening bed check at an orphanage and the names the teacher calls out are 'Ivanov! Sidorov! Offenbach!' "At that moment everyone jumped and cried out 'Offenbach! Yes it suits you perfectly! Hooray!' I accepted it from the first moment because everything German was close to my heart: I am very punctual and I keep my word; if I promise to do something, I will do it. I also knew and loved Offenbach's music. Since then this name became mine, and I was delighted to sign my artworks Offenbach." From his childhood Offenbach had a talent for drawing. With a smile he remembers drawing a realistic picture of an Armenian national hero on a horse, which won an award at his school competition. “It was hung on the board of honor in the corridor – and then was stolen. I was proud of that," Grigor laughs. "But realism didn't last. Kiki, my close friend since we met as classmates, must take the blame for my starting to create abstract art. His contagious enthusiasm infected the whole youth group around. He also whetted our appetite for reading books about modern art and philosophy.” On the question of what philosophy he has applied to his own life Offenbach said simply, “I always loved to see what

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is on the back side of the coin. That's probably why I never wanted to paint with brushes; I wanted to break with the traditional art techniques used by socialistic-realist artists. And why apply paint when you can remove it? After I make the background base, I clean the paint off with a car window squeegee. It gives me what I always wanted to have: a combination of large smear strokes, then medium and at the end small strokes. This technique produced a visual illusion of moving perspective and I was happy about it.” Asked how he prepared himself for his painting sessions, Offenbach says he meditates to put himself into a state of

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"high concentration and a kind of trance. It was like the idea in karate that before you make a hit you have to gather all your energy and power in a knot inside you and become still. Then I shouted from the top of my lungs like the Japanese sum-e masters whom I loved to watch, and made a single movement. In this style the stroke cannot be corrected or repeated twice in the same place. I knew what happened happened. Good or bad.” Asked how the name of the Bunker group was born, Offenbach explains, “I had a studio that used to be a boxing gym.

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After perestroika I privatized it and used as a small exhibition space. It was in the basement of a 12-story house. It had 3 iron metal doors with narrow, 30x60 cm windows. It reminded me of wartime bunkers and we decided to call it our art bunker. When Sergey Djavadian told us that he wanted to work with us, the Bunker Art Group was born.” Offenbach remains the only one left in the former Soviet Union, although not in Armenia's beautiful capital city Yerevan but in Moscow. He told me why: “Perestroika in USSR was followed by an economic blockade of Armenia; there was no light, no heat, no gas. I painted in a studio lit only by two kerosene lamps. The government gave us a half a pound of flour a day and I had to feed two little girls. In addition, the Nagorno-Karabakh War was raging on the border with Azerbaijan. The situation was so critical that my closest friends began leaving Armenia: Armen, Kiki, Sev. The last was Martin. That's when I with my wife of 30 years, Natasha, moved to Moscow.” "The Art Bunker remains closed in Yerevan. There are a lot of works there by our guys, the Bunkers. I dream we will all

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gather together in the Bunker again, put on a large exhibition of the Javadian art collection, look at our old and new works, discuss them, and laugh happily like in the good old days."

Interview by Larisa Pilinsky