Sev

Born in Armenia 1954, Sev started his career as a writer until he met a group of underground artists and joined their ranks. As a member of the Third Floor art group and later as a member of the Bunker Art Group, Sev took part in more than 100 exhibitions and creative actions in Armenia, Russia, Lithuania, Estonia, France, and Germany from 1987 to 1999. His works are part of the permanent collections of the Narva City Museum in Estonia; Panevezhiss City Museum in Lithuania, Museum of Contemporary Art of Madeline, Colombia and private collections in Armenia, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, USA, Canada, Australia, Netherlands and Sweden. Sev now lives and works in Los Angeles.

SEV henry haChtryan

UNTITLED 89-2. Burned plastic on Wood

Sev is the one artist in Bunker’s original group who does not make paintings. He paints, but on low-relief sculptures made of plastic, which he has created by subjecting common objects (containers, appliances) to fire and rescuing the reduced, tortured forms before they are completely consumed. This approach could be seen as a reaction by an emigré newly arrived in Los Angeles to the consumerist material culture of his newly adopted country and (especially) city. But while that reaction indeed flavors Sev’s approach, he began making these objects long before he moved to L.A. Furthermore, his primary concern (aligned, certainly, with the prominence of assemblage practice in Los Angeles art) is with saving, even recycling, such abject forms into something more noble and mysterious. His commentary is not political so much as it is social and psychological: the melted, distorted, blackened objects mirror our souls and our psyches and speak to both the agonies and the joys of human existence. Sev finds black beautiful in and of itself, a tranquil and spiritual non-color. Indeed, “Sev” means “black” in Armenian, and in his work the artist (who invariably dresses in black) reflects on the manifold conditions of blackness – right down to the ominous “noir” that pervades the sunny clime of southern California.

i aM Silent about nothinG

UNTITLED 89-1. Burned plastic on Wood

The artist known as Sev (Henrich Hachatryan) says, “I was born into a family of Soviet intelligentsia. From my childhood I read a lot of American science fiction: Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke. I dreamt of being a writer myself but when I brought my stories to Soviet magazines the editors praised but never published me. After his parents discouraged his studying philology Sev ended up studying engineering. However his will to be a creator won out and he quit university, which meant also being drafted into the Soviet army. “At least it gave me time to find a path in life that was right for me."

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It was then that Sev met Kiki and his friends. "What I noted about them first was their unusual beards. For me it was a sign of their freedom. Second I noted the way they talked: very unpretentious and direct. They called things by their right names. I understood that I had met real artists.” After Sev celebrated his 30th birthday and his friends left, he did something unpredictable. “I packed up all my manuscripts, books, and journals, which took up 30 bags, and threw them into the fire, one by one. One read, 'If there is a literature without words, this is my literature." When Sev was finished he felt as though repressed inner layers of memory had been released and he saw everything in a brighter light. “I liked the process of burning," he says. While visiting his brother in the country the next spring he worked for the first time with discarded metal scraps. "For three days I welded non stop. At the end I had created a 4-meter tall sculpture.” In 1986 Sev's new circle of friends and artists invited him to participate for the first time in one of their semi-official semi-underground shows.

UNTITLED. Plastic on Wooden Board

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Sev exhibited his early art in a public square in Yerevan as a way of communicating with the general populace, but the general populace was not so inviting. Many asked why he had brought such ugly pieces, and some accused him of offending conventional Armenian national art. Sev and his sculptures were even arrested one time. "I got lucky," he says, "the desk sergeant had a sense of humor and just told the policemen to take me and my sculptures back." During this period Sev became interested in Zen Buddhism and his favorite art style became Dada. He doesn't like to explain his art. “If I sit in silence and somebody approaches me and asks, 'What are you silent about?' I tell them I am silent about nothing. That it is my meditation. Art for me and my friends was a continuation of our way of life that was difficult to explain to most people. In the process, however, we didn't become elite artists; we became outcasts.” Asked what the act of burning means to him, why it became his brush, Sev said, “Fire is a simultaneously destructive, creative and neutralizing force. It's a creative process in which I partially destroy old discarded things; my intention is to enter into dialogue with them. After they have burned and cooled, the material has changed and a new character appears, at which point my inner voice says it is time to stop. Then I clean the surface and listen for the new voice that will signal rebirth.” Beginning in 1987 Sev and his friends exhibited with the Third Floor Art Group in Yerevan. They parted ways, however,

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after the Plus-Minus exhibition of 1991 at which, Sev says, "pop artists were plus and minimalists and abstract artists who were following European and American traditions were minus." Sponsored by their visionary friend and knowledgable art connoisseur Sergei Djavadian they formed the Bunker Art Group. “Before meeting us Sergei thought that selling art was a good business," laughs Sev, "but our spirit was contagious. Something broke in his soul, or perhaps mended, and he became one of us. He also became a businessman who decided that it is better not to sell art.”

Like his colleagues Sev is excited and inspired by the opportunity to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Djavadian's collection. "It is as important for us to show our art as it is for Sergei to show the public his creation, the Bunker Art Group collection, his dream come true.”

FIRST AND SECOND GENERATIONS

by Peter Frank

(continued from p. 4)

Broken Eggs Exhibition in the USC IGM Institute of Genetics, 2002 From left to right: Narine, Lark, Kiki and Pasqual Bettio, Presenting Certificate of recognition on behalf of Los Angeles City Hall

Sergey Djavadian with his wife Elmira

Djavadian has patronized these acolyte artists as well, especially since his own relocation to California. The four artists who currently comprise the core of Bunker’s second generation – and thus represent that generation in Djavadian’s collection – all live in the Los Angeles area as well, where they have ready contact with first-generation Bunker artists, a dedicated audience and patronage, and one another. Stylistically the second generation is even more diverse than the first, especially with its wider, brighter palette and often-ambitious exploration of size and scale. But its dedication to abstraction, its reliance on the physical presence of materials and on the countervailing evidence of human gesture, and its search for beauty in apparent chaos, the second generation faithfully maintains the aesthetic means and ideals of its predecessor.

The work of the six original Bunker artists, especially from the late 1980s and 1990s, forms the core of Djavadian’s large but focused collection, probably the world’s largest accretion of Bunker art in private hands. But Djavadian realizes that his commitment to the Bunker vision and aesthetic must include the emergent second generation – not least because the younger generation prominently features women artists, giving gender balance to what had been an Art exhibition Homage to Russian Avantgarde, City of West Hollywood Art Gallery, 2019 From left to right: Martin, Lark and Kiki

Sergei Djavadian and Ruslan at the "Homeless Art" show in Glendale. Ruslan's artwork is on the right wall

all-male coterie. In any case, this rare exhibition devoted to Djavadian’s collection provides a striking opportunity to see artists, art history, and a collector in the thick of synergistic action.

THE BUNKER SECOND GENERATIONS

Bunker Open Door Exhibition, 2018 From left to right: Narine, Martin, Marina Oustinova, Lark, Kiki. Bunker Art Show at Don O'Melveny Gallery, Los Angeles. Narine with her circular artwork Irena Minasyan in front of her art works

Ruslan in his art studio

Bunker Art Group Show, BGH gallery, Bergamot Art Studious, Santa Monica, 2000, show received LA Weekly, Art Editor's Pick of the Week Martin, Lark and Kiki at the show devoted to Vigen Tadevosyan, who influenced Bunker Group

Exhibition of Luciana Fontana in Italian Culture Center. From left to right: Kiki, Lark, Narine, Sev Armenian Artists exhibition in North Hollywood 2019 From left to right: Kiki and Narine