Badischer Kunstverein announce the first solo exhibition of Armenian artist Hamlet Hovsepian in the German-speaking world. Born in 1950 in Ashnak near Yerevan, Hovsepian numbers among the most interesting pioneers of Conceptual Art in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The presentation at Badischer Kunstverein focuses on Hamlet Hovsepian’s filmic works from the mid-1970s, which—despite the artist’s geographic isolation—display astonishing parallels with developments in the West, for instance the films of Bas Jan Ader and Vito Acconci, or Andy Warhol’s “Screen Tests.” Exhibition open 30 September–27 November 2011.
Hovsepian’s works seem to occupy a state of suspension: on the one hand, they adhere insistently to the naked, documentary gaze of early ethnographic film. On the other, they open up the potential of an allegorical vision which not only inscribes the observed gestures and actions into the registry of a condition humaine in the spirit of Samuel Beckett, but assume a concretely political dimension as well: as a revolt against the pervasive ideologization of everyday life in the Soviet Union, and as an attempt to wrest a degree of existential freedom from this system.
Hamlet Hovsepian (b. 1950 in Ashnak) lives and works in Ashnak, Armenia.
In cooperation with the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna.
Supported by the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts, Baden-Württemberg.