alexandramanukyan

The central theme that unites all my paintings examines the idea of tumultuous individual life experiences and how what feels and appears uniquely singular to one person actually represents only slight variations and the smallest degrees of separation through the looking glass of life. The "masks" and the accompanying identities we all assume depending on the life role we must play obstructs the conscious mind from acknowledging what truly unites us through the isolation and chaos: our shared encounters of pain, loss, desire, and longing for serenity and acceptance. The false facades we all manufacture to adapt and belong also renders most blind and lost in a world where the meaningless has somehow become meaningful and the idea of a shared honest self devoid of hidden agendas all too infrequent.

I focus on combining traditional oil painting techniques with surrealist symbolism to communicate the immediate and lasting impact of technological innovations on the human body and psyche. One recurring motif in my paintings often appears as the feminine form bearing the burdens of worldly grief and mistakes on her body bowing in resignation to a seemingly inevitable fate: the acquiescence of the corporeal state to the encroaching dominance of modern technologies conjoining itself like an apathetic demon of silicon and circuitry cursing more than fulfilling promises of beauty and comfort.