Peter Sarkisian Biography
Peter Sarkisian's multi-media installations lie at the intersection of film, video, and sculpture. He began his career as a filmmaker, and in 1994, shifted to video projection to create a hybrid form of video object that challenges the moving image, as well as its standardized format. The result is a richly textured art that engages the anxiety between the tangible and the illusive.
For Sarkisian, it is the deceptive and illusory nature of video itself that drives him to create real experiential encounters for the viewer. One part sculptural assemblage, one part video projection, his works function as perceptual traps, forcing the viewer to become active in their role as observer, and therefore snap out of the video-induced trance often experienced when engaged with commercial applications of the medium. In this way, the relation between viewer and viewed - and ultimately the dynamic between the two - is the focal point of Sarkisian's art.
The expression of time in video is another essential characteristic for Sarkisian, in that it triggers metaphorical references to memory, life, and a sense of the unknown. One of the medium's most unique qualities, time allows video to change and grow during the course of the viewer's encounter, thereby penetrating the fundamental barrier that separates living beings from the fixed, unmoving world of inanimate objects.
Sarkisian's work contains a degree of illusionism so high that it verges on the surreal. Indeed, he is well aware that video and moving photographic imagery inevitably engage the surreal; that once a thing's liability to the logical world is taken away, what is left can only exist outside of the realm of reality. "When used in this way, video causes the world to behave in ways it shouldn't," he says, "It offers a version of our world that often causes our sense of what's right and real to twist and distort. This allows for the creation of perceptually confusing moments, which is what I’m trying to create in order to pull the viewer’s experience back out of video and into the real world”.
For example, in his 1999 series titled White Water, Sarkisian projects tiny illusionary pools of water into small vessels, such as cups and bowls. Small figures can be seen swimming in the churning liquid, as if floating on a miniature sea.
In Boiling In Pail (2003), Sarkisian took the water concept a step further by projecting gurgling liquid against a hard resin suface set within a steel bucket. In this work, the projected bubbles appear to rise up from below a bright liquid surface, thus triggering a conflict of observation, or perceptual paradox, which first confuses, then heightens the viewer’s sense of awareness in relation to the image.
In later work, Sarkisian turned to clear plexiglass boxes or windows as environments in which to present his projected figures. In Dusted (1998), Sarkisian uses multiple synchronized projections to portray the image of a man and woman moving inside of a three-dimensional cube. The opacity of the cube slowly gives way to transparency as their bodies brush away a layer of suit from its inner surface, thereby revealing a murky view of the interior. This process in turn smears the figures inside and causes them to disappear proportionally. The transition of the cube from soot-covered to clear, and the figure’s opposite transformation from clear to soot-covered, demonstrates an interest in equal and opposite forces. The title “Dusted” also suggests complimentary views of the work’s visual transformation - as part of it becomes covered with dust, another becomes dusted clean.
In Registered Driver #1 (2004), a tiny man is projected against the window of a toy car, as if driving his vehicle though city streets. This work evolved over time through several renditions, eventually emerging as Registered Driver Full Scale (2010), in which a driver (Sarkisian) is shown sitting in a 14 foot Ferrari Modena, carelessly plowing through computer generated streets, crashing into virtual buildings and running over animated pedestrians. Behind him, an older man (Sarkisian’s father) is stuck in the back seat, tossing about helplessly while the homicidal driver takes him for a joyride through the cartoon-like terrain. The latest step in the progression of the Registered Driver series, this work reflects Sarkisian’s own attempt to bridge the tangible world with the mediated, as well as the passing of one generation into the next while moving through a fast changing media saturated landscape.
The Extruded Video Engine (2007) is Sarkisian’s most recent work involving video projection and three-dimensional engineered screens. In this installation, shapes, colors and words flicker across a contoured 3D surface, challenging the viewer’s perception by adding volume to the image plain. The Video Engine is a dynamic expression of video itself: a brightly animated facade through which ribbons of text scroll like ticker-tape past gears and pistons. These text ribbons were pieced together using words provided by Sarkisian’s family and friends, and reflect a gamut of deeply personal memories. By transcribing these memories, Sarkisian transforms a lifetime of intimate experience into a few fleeting bylines. The result is a parody of video itself and the circus that television has become.