Karen Sargsyan's Scrap Baroque

Karen Sargsyan would rather sing than be a visual artist, thrilling opera houses with his baritone, or maybe dance, leaping across stages as if his body were spring loaded. Were he given the chance, he'd have checked actor before artist, imagining himself staggering across simulated moors in Lear's mad scene.

Alas. His theatrical heart can find expression only through the work of his hand. In that hand is a scissors.

The queen flings her arms out in a slow-motion, dying fall, ignored by her rotund consort in the corner who prefers the company of his jester.

Now at Ambach & Rice, Sargsyan's Abroad Understanding was created at the Hat Factory in upstate New York and exhibited earlier this year at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art.


Sargsyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia in 1973 and lives in Amsterdam. At a time in which young artists are increasingly disinclined to commit to a single medium, Sargsyan has thrown his all behind heavy-stock paper, which he cuts into frenzied form and hangs on metal armatures, just as his Netherlands colleague, Folkert de Jong, focuses on painted Styrofoam.

What Boccioni achieved in 1913 with bronze, Sargsyan updates and transforms with flimsier materials. Motionless, each of his figures is in motion, layered into a series of messy tableaus. As his figures are nothing more than large paper dolls, they should be trivial, but the elusive themes they sound are profound.

Through November 28. Ambach & Rice is expanding the idea of what a gallery can be in Seattle, not just a commercial space but an art center with a global reach.